Grim 'Unknowns,' Seinfeld spotlight and dueling Britney documentaries

• Author: HANNAH BROWN
• Published date: 06 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Based on the first three episodes that were released to the press, it is a sad and violent story of a high school for juvenile delinquents in Beit Shemesh where the students become suspects in a criminal investigation. A young woman is found wandering dazed and beaten in the woods and the police assume she was raped, although she is in shock and will not tell investigators what happened to her. The police detective (Yaniv Bitton) leading the investigation starts out suspecting a student of Ethiopian descent at the school who is a talented singer and has just been accepted to an army entertainment troupe. He will be the first of the school's students, most of whom rarely show up, to serve in the army. But this singer seems like an angel compared to most of the school's students. Menachem (Ofek Pesach, who gives a chilling performance) is particularly malevolent and he leads a small gang of students who sell drugs in and around the school. Osher (Amir Tessler), has a girlfriend who lives on a nearby kibbutz and hopes to join the army soon but struggles to cope with a drug addict mother and her Arab boyfriend. One teacher (Shani Cohen), who happens to be the detective's wife, truly believes in her students and she is the only one they listen to. Added to the mix is Yaniv (Yehuda Levi), who has been convicted of running a binary options scam and has been sentenced to do his community service at the school.

Clearly, the show is meant to address the issue of marginalized youth in Israel, as well as the trauma that rape victims suffer and a couple of other issues that would involve revealing spoilers. The addition of Levi as a white-collar criminal underscores the fact that educated people who commit far more serious crimes tend to receive much more lenient punishments than these young offenders. The sentiments expressed are all laudable but that does not make for an entertaining drama. The story is told from multiple points of view and while I could feel sorry for many of the characters, I was not really that interested in them.

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THE CHARACTER most likely to awaken our sympathy is the teacher, who finds that the case her husband is working on evokes buried memories of trauma. Shani Cohen is a wonderful actress and when she performs in comedy, as she has on Wonderful Country (Eretz Nehederet) and other shows, she is lively and...