South Tel Aviv is turned into Israel’s largest, most troubled enclave of the displaced in Asylum City.
Following the murder of Michal Poleg (Mali Levi), a fierily committed young social activist working with the largely Eritrean and Sudanese refugees who have turned South Tel Aviv into Israel’s largest and most controversial enclave of the displaced, first-time investigative lead Anat Sitton (Hani Furstenberg) is confronted with numerous suspects.
These include African refugee Gavriel (Chancela Mongoza, himself a Congolese refugee), who is trying to raise money to free his sister from kidnappers; Michal’s ex-lover, Yariv (Ori Yaniv), a shifty barrister she accused of corruption; and even the local mafia, whom she had recently confronted over the strongarm tactics they use to provide usurious banking services to the newcomers.
Yet as her investigations progress, Anat and her colleagues untangle a web of interests that begin with that underworld but grow to encompass not only financial impropriety, but enforced deportations and malfeasance at the highest levels of government.
This is the world of Asylum City, the acclaimed new 12-part Israeli miniseries that debuted there late last year. Available via SBS On Demand since August, the half-hours remain available online but now debut in weekly instalments on its free-to-air service. A trio of Israeli creatives have adapted the show from the second of nine thrillers to date by Tel Aviv-based writer and lawyer Liad Shoham, who has been called Israel’s John Grisham.
The mean streets of the city as depicted here are much grimmer and more dangerous than the American’s comparatively genteel Southern Gothics, presenting as they do a run-down haven for the exhausted refugees, fraught with peril and greed – but compared with where they’ve escaped from perhaps a haven nonetheless.
Eddie Cockrell gives his top recommendations for a week of television viewing in The Australian.