TV Week: Hanoch, Hopkins, and Billy muddle through

Bad Boy, one of the most anticipated new Israeli series in years, will be coming to Hot on November 21. It tells a hard-hitting story of a juvenile detention center, and was co-written by Daniel Chen, who based it on his own experiences, and was created by Ron Leshem and Hagan Ben-Asher, who also directed it.

Leshem is one of Israel’s most successful television creators, having written and created series such as the original Euphoria, as well as its American HBO adaptation of the same name, and the series Red Skies, Northern Storm (aka 8200), and Valley of Tears. Ben-Asher started her career in Israel but moved to the US, directing Dead Women Walking, an anthology film about female death-row inmates in 2018. This should be worth the wait.

Hanoch Daum continues to be the most likable shlub currently on Israeli television, a distinction for which there is quite a bit of competition, on his Keshet series, Life is a Difficult Age, which runs Mondays after the news on Channel 12 and then available on mako.co.il. The series continues to let him be himself as a stand-up comedian, husband, and father living in the West Bank who can’t even fill his car up with gas without blundering and using the situation for shtick. 

In the latest episode, he is trying to get a visa to go to the US and do a show there. For a whole crazy set of reasons, he tries to bring explosives into the embassy and manages to create a situation that the security staff has never encountered. It all happens under the watchful eye of his daughter, played by Neta Roth, who has his number more than anyone else.

Following this fiasco, he is interviewed by Yair Cherki and tries to win an argument by making up research showing that arguments solve nothing. The argument in question is a very current one, about whether it was in poor taste for Daum to perform stand-up for survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri. Noam Imber, of Matchmaking 2 and Here We Are, one of Israel’s brightest stars, shows up as a hipster sociologist hitchhiker living in Gush Etzion. I hope he’ll be a recurring character.

THE ONE thing that Billy Crystal in the Apple TV+ series Before has in common with Hanoch Daum is that he has trouble operating his coffeemaker. We don’t see Daum using a coffeemaker, but I’m sure he would have trouble with one. Before is a thriller with supernatural overtones, so don’t expect the usual sardonic, funny Crystal we all know and love. The idea of creating a thriller with Crystal at the center is intriguing, but unfortunately, this series just doesn’t work on any level. 

In all his work, Crystal tends to withdraw from what’s going on around him at moments, as if he is sizing everything and everyone up and deciding if he wants to keep interacting with them. In Before, he is completely withdrawn and mostly blank throughout. 

He plays a psychiatrist who is having trouble getting over his wife’s suicide. The wife, seen in flashbacks, is played by Judith Light, who is also usually funny – she was Tony Danza’s employer in Who’s the Boss?. 

Crystal is given the case of a difficult, creepy child in foster care; meanwhile, the tormented shrink has nightmares about corpses walking. It turns out the kid may hold the clue to these bad dreams. There’s a twist at the end, but you won’t make it to the end – I skipped to the last episode after I suffered through the first two. The best thing I can say about the series is that there’s a cute bulldog. 

Catch 'Armageddon Time' on Netflix 

JAMES GRAY’S Armageddon Time wasn’t in theaters very long when it opened here in early 2023, and now you can see it on Netflix. Despite the title, it isn’t a science fiction film; rather, it’s a coming-of-age story about a Jewish boy in New York in the 1980s.

The titular apocalypse comes from a scary remark by Ronald Reagan which makes a big impression on the tween hero, Paul Graff (Banks Repeta). Paul is a smart kid but he gets into trouble and befriends another troublemaker, Johnny Davis (Jaylin Webb), a handsome, self-confident African-American kid who’s already been left back a year and dreams of becoming an astronaut.

Paul’s family life is fraught as his repairman father (Jeremy Strong) feels like a failure, and he has a contentious relationship with his mother (Anne Hathaway). The most memorable character in the film is his immigrant grandfather, played by two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins. Although he occasionally sounds more British than Polish, Hopkins gives a very winning performance as the grandfather we all wish we had, in this sometimes meandering film.