Reviews

As a repressed geeky child I was forcefed classic musicals against my will. Being made to watch the Sound of Music eight times - in those days it had to physically be at a cinema - would probably qualify nowadays as a reportable offence. Different times indeed.

Yet had I not had to squirm my childish way through so many hours of insane cheerfulness, technicolour highjinks, and sado-maso gender politics, Schmigadoon would not have the same power to unshackle me so thoroughly from the grey treadmill of so many indistinguishable weeks and months spent cowering from Covid.

Watching the five episodes of season 1 over three nights has put delight back in my heart, and it is with a sense of reverence toward the enlightened beings who made something so completely delicious and supremely well executed that it has definitively redeemed and elevated what is possibly the most abject genre of popular entertainment known to humanity.

Bring on season two.

This came up on the Netflix portal and I avoided it, as being probably all about religion and patriarchy and just ... heavy. Something in the face of the actors Doval'e Glickman - then something in the face of Michael Aloni - (Shtisel father and son, and we never really know who we love more and who is our main character) - jumped out from the publicity images. I'm not Jewish and have always been a bit scared of orthodox anything. The story is really elemental and could take place at any time. It takes its time to explore the impact of seismic struggles between parents and children and husbands and wives, the kinds of struggles - that can forge your character or wreck your life - that many of us are doomed to go through. But these people more so because God can called on by both sides to bolster their arguments. And there is much love in it, even when the characters are treating each other brutally. There is also playfulness and urbanity and some magic. It takes place in Israel but because the ultraorthodox don't approve of the society they live in ('those evil people' they call the Zionists), you can set aside your personal views about the political situation. The cast is incredibly well chosen for their roles, all very distinctive and lovable, even the bad characters; the acting is very fine; the pace is perfectly judged and the writing never intrudes; the locations are authentic-seeming; and the whole structure has the weight and momentum of myth, more truth than a true story and more treasurable and satisfying than anything else I can think of in any artform over the past decade or so. Thank you to all who collaborated and created this series - if you never did anything again in your life, you can be content you have reached a level of beauty that may not have previously been achieved in television.