The Intern, which premiered on Tuesday and will run on Thursdays on Hot 3, Hot VOD, and Next TV, is a polished medical suspense drama starring Niv Sultan, best known for Tehran.
She plays Hadas, an ambitious and very promising surgical resident who becomes upset by the politics of organ donation at the hospital where she works.
When a former classmate of hers is denied a kidney he needs to save his life, she takes matters into her own hands.
She finds a way to obtain a kidney and also to operate on him, in contravention of every rule the hospital has. Obviously, Hadas must hide this from her boss, played by Tzahi Grad.
Her father was also a senior surgeon there, and she is an insider who is initially above suspicion, but jealous rivals among her colleagues soon begin finding clues about what has happened.
The series brings to mind a very interesting movie about illegal organ sales in London, Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things, and the sitcom/medical drama Royal Pains.
In Royal Pains, Mark Feuerstein played an idealistic doctor who went rogue over a similar issue and found himself kicked out of the hospital where he worked.
Everything to do with organ donations tends to be dramatic, and now that the phenomenon of altruistic organ donations is better known, it turns out that the people who make such donations can have a say in who receives their organs.
While there are some new angles in The Intern on organ donation, much of the plot and the characters are pretty familiar.
Sultan is good and very convincing as a brilliant surgeon-in-training, and the storyline about her caring for her mentally disabled sister works well.
But squeamish viewers should know that the series features very graphic depictions of surgery, like The Pitt, and be warned in advance.
The series was created by Endemol Shine Israel, in collaboration with The North Road Company and SIPUR.
KAN 11 running new black comedy
ANOTHER NEW Israeli series now running on KAN 11, Finders Keepers, is a black comedy about adult siblings – played by Shai Avivi (Burning Man, Here We Are), Yael Sharoni (who played Yifat on Srugim), and Ofer Shechter (The ’90s) – in dire need of money, who hope to inherit their late father’s modest investments and apartment.
They are thrown for a loop when it turns out he left his apartment, the biggest asset, to a young prostitute (Liron Ben- Shlush), and they must overcome their conflicts – and they have plenty of conflicts – to try to find a way to get the apartment for themselves.
It was created by Guy Koren and Erez Drigues, an actor/writer who was caught up in a #MeToo scandal, so this is a comeback of sorts for him.
There is a certain kind of Israeli drama or comedy in which characters constantly bicker and belittle each other, and Finders Keepers is one of them.
Some reviewers have found it all hilarious, and you might, too, but I’m not captivated by this kind of humor. If I want to see people bickering in Israel, I can find that anywhere I go; I like to see something a little different on television.
Third season of Euphoria streaming on HBO Max
AS THE third season of Euphoria continues on HBO Max, it has moved away from its core focus of telling the stories of Rue (Zendaya) and her equally troubled high-school classmates.
In fact, it has gotten into quasi-Quentin Tarantino territory, as some of the former high schoolers get caught up in the world of crime.
While this new focus worked in the early episodes of the new season, it has moved into a fever pitch of sadism and cruelty with a focus on the pimp and strip club owner, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), for whom Rue now works, who speaks in aphorisms, as so many criminals do on screen.
It’s also become a repository for a kind of torture porn. In one sequence, after Alamo suspects Rue of robbing him, he has his henchmen bury her up to her neck in the desert, then rides at her on a horse, wielding a polo mallet, and we wait in suspense to see if he will beat her to death with blows to her head.
It’s a scene reminiscent of one in the Holocaust film The Painted Bird, in which a boy is buried up to his neck as crows eye him, seemingly about to peck him to death.
This sadism infuses the entire show now, and when Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) gets a package, your mind will instantly go to a similar scene from the movie Seven, and you just know that something horrible is inside.
The series is very popular, so I guess people enjoy all this, but I feel Euphoria had more impact when it was about the relationships among the characters, and about Rue’s inability to shake her drug problem, as well as the inability of the adults around her to help her.
Now it’s mostly over-the-top cruelty in scene after scene. There is some showbiz satire following Cassie’s career as an aspiring actress, and a parody of the influencer scene.
Mother-daughter dramedies to take over Netflix
NETFLIX IS featuring two dramedies with very different mothers, daughters, and sisters: Postcards from the Edge (available starting May 22) and In Her Shoes, which it added recently.
Both of these feature wonderful performances by Shirley MacLaine (and both are also available on Apple TV+).
Postcards from the Edge is a 1990 film starring MacLaine and Meryl Streep that is truly as fresh as the day it was released.
The movie, directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), was based on a largely autobiographical novel by Carrie Fisher, the late Star Wars actress who was the daughter of movie star Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher.
It tells the story of a complicated relationship between a mother and a daughter, both in show business.
Streep was trying to shake her image as an actress who played only heavy dramas and used interesting accents, while in Postcards, she portrayed a frazzled, self-deprecating character.
Suzanne (Streep) is a struggling actress with substance abuse issues who has grown up in the shadow of her egotistical mother, Doris (MacLaine), once a huge star from Hollywood’s golden age.
After Suzanne overdoses, a court orders her to live with her mother following her rehab, so she can continue to work on what looks like a not-too-funny cop comedy.
That’s the basic setup, and it’s great fun to watch these two actresses work together as they rehash the past and try to cope with each other in the present.
There are also several musical numbers, and it was one of the first times Streep sang in a movie, performing a country-western song and Ray Charles’s “You Don’t Know Me.”
MacLaine gave it her all when she sang the showbiz anthem “I’m Still Here.” The movie features a stellar supporting cast, including Rob Reiner as one of the producers of the cop movie, Gene Hackman as its director, and Richard Dreyfuss as the doctor who pumped Suzanne’s stomach.
On top of that, Dennis Quaid plays the guy she was doing drugs with when she overdosed, and Annette Bening plays one of her first prominent roles as another girlfriend of Quaid’s character.
But what you’ll remember most are the emotionally resonant scenes between Streep and MacLaine.
In Her Shoes (2005) is based on a best-selling novel by Jennifer Weiner, and, like Postcards, it’s the story of how two women, in this case, sisters, eventually figure out that neither is as perfect or as flawed as the other thought she was.
Toni Collette plays Rose, a frumpy but very successful lawyer who has no luck with men, and Cameron Diaz, in what was her best performance to date, as Maggie, her gorgeous, promiscuous sister who has dyslexia and can’t get a decent job.
They grew up in the shadow of grief over the loss of their mentally ill mother and have always bonded over their dislike for their annoying stepmother.
Just as in Postcards, they are forced to live together, but here it’s only briefly, and Maggie takes off to find their grandmother (MacLaine), who is in an assisted-living facility in Florida.
There is a great supporting cast playing residents there, including Jerry Adler, Francine Beers, and Norman Lloyd, and Mark Feuerstein of Royal Pains also shows up.