This piece originally ran on Jewish TV Club.
Last month, we got a lot of really exciting Israeli TV news. The premiere of “Kugel,” the “Shtisel” prequel, was announced. So was the much-anticipated return of “Tehran,” the Apple TV+ and KAN collaboration about an Israeli spy in the Iranian city. And Lior Raz, who is now starring in “Gladiator II,” shared some details about season five of “Fauda,” which is currently in the works.
Raz and Avi Issacharoff, the co-creators of the hit show that put Israeli TV on the (Netflix) map, were at first unsure of whether they wanted to have a fifth season of the thriller about a covert IDF unit that embeds itself in the Arab population. The show stars Raz as Doron Kavillo and is largely inspired by his own IDF service.
The fourth season of the show, its most ambitious and wide-ranging, premiered on Netflix in January of 2023. It was believed to be the last we would see of Doron and his crew. But in September of that year, we got some exciting news.
“We wrote the fourth season of ‘Fauda’ as a last season,” Raz shared in podcast interview, but added, “Now we want another season.” And another season they got — Israel’s Yes network confirmed that a fifth season of “Fauda” would be happening in September of 2023.
And then, well, we all know what happened in early October of 2023. Raz, who was in Romania at the time, made his way to the frontlines with Issacharoff on October 8. They went to Sderot where, along with a civilian rescue group, they volunteered to help evacuate people from the city still under attack by both Hamas terrorists on the ground and missile fire. They even helped rescue families in the heat of the attack, including a blind mother and daughter who were stuck in the city which was out of power.
And “Fauda?” It, like the rest of the country, will be forever changed.
Two members of the “Fauda” crew were severely impacted by the Hamas-Israel War. One of the show’s producers, Matan Meir, was killed in Gaza, and star Idan Amedi, who plays Sagi Tzur, was severely injured in action. Raz recalls rushing to Israel after shooting his last “Gladiator II” scene to see him and crying in the hospital room. He said that Amedi needed to be part of season five, no matter what.
“I hear a lot that we at ‘Fauda’ are fortelling the future here and there in the script,” Raz shared with Ynet. “In season three we were already dealing with Israeli hostages in Gaza, a man and a woman. It seemed unlikely that they could kidnap them and cross the border with the hostages. Even we couldn’t imagine that it would ever happen. We told ourselves that it was a pretty fictional script. But on October 7 it actually happened, 300 times what we imagined, and the cruelty and evil from Hamas were and are a million times what we could’ve imagined…. When we sat to write season five, before the war, we started throwing ideas. I told Avi, ‘Maybe this time the plotline should be about a group of terrorists that take over an entire town in Judea and Samaria and are holding negotiations about liberating it.’ Avi said, ‘It’s so fictional, we can’t do that.’ Then October 7 happened and it wasn’t one town or two. Hamas managed to do something terrible that’s more than anything we could’ve imagined.”
In the writing of season five, he continued, “we are addressing October 7. It is very present and overall the plot takes place about two years after.” Raz didn’t say much else about what the plot would be, and remained mum when asked if the show envisioned some hostages still in Gaza, but it will be interesting to see Israeli TV’s biggest creator deal with such a history-changing event.
It will still be a while before “Fauda” season five premieres, but the third season of “Tehran” will be here next month. Well, not exactly here, where I’m writing from the U.S., but in Israel.
When October 7 happened, the show’s third season, which deals with the Iranian nuclear program and stars Hugh Laurie (yes, Dr. House himself!) as a South African nuclear inspector, had already finished shooting, wrapping up on location in Greece. The show was meant to premiere in April of 2024. But could Apple TV+ really air a show about the Israeli-Iranian conflict in the middle of a war?
Long before the conflict expanded and Iran started firing missiles at Israel, the network’s answer appeared to be no. “We are currently considering creative changes for season four and therefore are not meeting the production schedules as planned,” the production company of Shula Spiegel and Dana Eden shared with Ynet in November of 2023. Rumors had it that Apple TV+ didn’t want to air the season until the war was over.
But last month, KAN shared that season three would be premiering on their channels on December 9.
As I wrote back then, many have pointed out that plot points from the show’s first two seasons have come to fruition in real life over the last year of heated conflict with Iran and its proxies. For example, at the end of season two, the head of the IRGC was killed by a phone that was detonated by the Mossad, which mirrors Israel’s recent targeting of Hezbollah militants through their beepers.
“This season is going to be a more suspenseful season, a bigger season, with new stars, new intrigues,” Dana Eden shared with KAN last month. “We have Sasson Gabbai, who I think you will see him in a different way than we’ve seen until today, he’s actually an action star, a Mossad agent.” (Gabbai is also starring in “Kugel” which is premiering in December too, but whose plot will not be impacted by October 7, because, as mentioned above, it is a prequel.)
Eden shared that Laurie “really loved the series. It wasn’t hard to recruit him,” though I wonder how he thinks about it now, after October 7.
She said that this season follows Israeli Persian spy Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan) as she finds herself “alone in Tehran, being chased both by the Mossad and the Iranian security forces.” It’s “a crazy rollercoaster,” she added, saying that she hopes that what happens in this season may also manifest itself into real life.
And yet there is no news at the moment about whether the season will premier on Apple TV+ for American viewers. And it will be interesting to see what happens to “Fauda” season five as well. The show’s four seasons are currently still available to stream on Netflix, and seasons one and two of “Tehran” are on Apple TV+. Even though they were filmed long before October 7, I’m sure that after it, we will never be able to watch them again in quite the same way.
