TV week: 'Tehran’ is back and ‘Mary’ mostly misses

Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan), the cute, badass cyber genius Mossad agent is back, in the third season of Tehran, the first episode of which aired on Monday night on Kan 11 (and which will be shown around the world on Apple TV+ on a date to be announced) and not a moment too soon. 

When we left Tamar at the end of the second season, over two years ago, it would have been hard to predict that the third season would air at a time when Iran had just launched the two largest ballistic missile attacks in history against Israel. Or that Israel would have managed to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in a residence for VIPs while in Tehran to attend a memorial ceremony for the Iranian president, who died in a suspicious helicopter crash. Or the pager attack on Hezbollah. Or any number of real-life events that are even less plausible than the most far-fetched plot turns in this series. 

Given that so much time has passed since the previous season, you might want to look up a plot summary or re-watch some of the old episodes, available on Kan at kan.org.il or on Apple TV+ with English subtitles. The various twists and double-crosses that came at the end of season two are too complicated to go into here, and it’s important to remember the details because the new season picks up right as the second season ends, with no time jump. 

Just to recap, Tamar went rogue and assassinated an evil Iranian general at his son’s funeral, which Yulia (Sara von Schwarze) her tough-as-nails Mossad handler, had warned her not to do. When the car that was supposed to take Tamar to safety blows up, she is left alone in Tehran, without anyone whom she can trust. 

While it’s more satisfying than ever to see Tamar outsmart the Iranians, the series has always been about more than good guys vs bad guys, and that is especially true of the new season, the first four episodes of which were released to the press. 

The series looks at how the Iranian people have suffered from the authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republic. While Tamar continues her fight against treacherous operatives of the regime, notably her nemesis Faraz Kamali (Sean Toub, always so good as the tight-lipped, utterly ruthless security agent you love to hate), the series is also a portrait of Iran and its people, who are yearning for freedom. 

As Tamar flees the scene of the car explosion, hiding from both the Mossad and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, she stumbles into a women’s shelter in the heart of the city, which introduces what will be one of the overarching themes of the season: the plight of Iranian women. 

This season was clearly conceived in the wake of the Woman. Life. Freedom movement against the oppression of women. The director of the shelter, while suspicious at first, accepts Tamar’s explanation that she is hiding from her abusive husband since this is such a common story in a place where women have few legal rights. 

As Tamar uses the shelter as a base while she tries to prevent a shipment of parts needed to create a nuclear bomb, there is a new storyline about the head of a team of nuclear inspectors from the United Nations, Eric Peterson, played by Hugh Laurie of House. Just as ornery as Dr. House, Peterson is openly contemptuous of the Iranian scientists. 

The first episode is really about setting up the new storyline for Peterson’s mission and Tamar’s attempts to get back in the Mossad’s good graces by preventing the creation of a nuclear bomb. It’s full of action and twists, as is the entire series. 

Mary on Netflix

IF YOU’RE a fan of Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s Saturday Night Live, it’s hard not to think of a skit from late last year as you watch the new Netflix movie, Mary, about Jesus’s mother. The movie, which has come in for criticism around the world for its casting of Jewish Israeli actors in lead roles, tells the story of Mary’s youth and her early days as a mother. 

Much of the criticism of the casting from around the world seems to indicate that many have bought into a strange narrative that Jesus and his family were not Jews. 

In the Eretz Nehederet skit, American guest star Brett Gelman from Stranger Things played a Berkeley professor taking students back in time to the birth of Jesus, trying to prove that there were no Jews in Judea at that time. Mary and Joseph were bewildered when the professor told them they were Palestinian and people who don’t find that funny will be equally displeased by Mary, which shows Jesus’s parents as Jews very much concerned with their religion.  

The movie, which seems to be intended for 20-somethings, plays like Game of Thrones meets Romeo and Juliet meets, well, Jesus. It’s axiomatic that there can’t be any sex in this story so the filmmakers have added as much violence and action as possible, with lots of stabbings, chases on horseback, and torch waving. It features sweet, appealing performances by Noa Cohen in the title role and Ido Tako (currently appearing in the movies Come Closer and The Vanishing Soldier) as Joseph.

During most of the film, Mary looks like a model in a perfume commercial, mixed with one of those catalogs that sell expensive earthenware products and organically made fabrics so you can simplify your life.

The film starts out with Mary’s parents, Joachim (Ori Pfeffer) and Anne (Hila Vidor), and their struggle to have a child, and juxtaposes this with the corruption and power-madness of King Herod (Anthony Hopkins). The Game of Thrones influence is felt most in the sections with Herod, where he stabs anyone who dares to argue with him and vows that he will not let a messiah be born who will become king of the Jews – that’s his job.

Mary is born, of course, and she is a rambunctious, sweet girl, but when she becomes a teenager, her parents bring her to the Temple to fulfill the promise that Joachim made to the angel Gabriel (Dudley O’Shaughnessy) that he would give her over to serve God if she were born. 

So Mary joins a group of young girls dressed in long red dresses like The Handmaid’s Tale and does many good deeds, such as bringing bread to beggars outside the Temple. She gets regular visits from Lucifer (Eamon Farren), who looks like he could be part of Robert Pattinson’s vampire family in the Twilight movies, and who tries to weaken Mary’s faith in God. 

Mary and Joseph meet cute when her golden scarf blows away as she is washing clothes in a rather oddly placed river outside the Old City of Jerusalem, and he wades in to get it. Sparks fly and soon they are engaged, although they remain chaste and Mary soon gets a visit from Gabriel telling her... Well, no spoilers here. 

Much of the movie details Mary’s struggle to hide her baby from the marauding thugs sent by Herod to kill him and given who we all know the baby grew up to be, there’s no real suspense, but maybe some will relate to the characters enough to enjoy it. 

I’ll admit that I tend to find Bible epics unintentionally funny, such as in The Ten Commandments, where Bithiah (Nina Foch), scoops the infant Moses out of the Nile and says, “Because I drew you from the water, you shall be called Moses,” a line that makes absolutely no sense unless you know the Hebrew verb she is referring to. Mary has many such moments, so if you enjoy movies where you can make wisecracks, you’ll likely have fun.