Moshe Zonder likes to think of himself as “a believer”. Wherever the 54-year-old Israeli has focused his creative gaze, be it investigative journalism or a screenwriting, he’s carried a measure of faith in his ability to illuminate a story. But even Zonder was surprised when he made it to the first morning of production on his new Apple TV+ espionage thriller Tehran. A herculean five-year journey of research and possibly reconciliation had been completed.
“Whenever I’m working on a project I’m positive 300 per cent that it will be a show at the end,” Zonder says. “But I have to say that on the opening day of shooting I wanted to take everyone’s hands and say, ‘It’s a miracle that all of us are here making this’.”
Originally made for Israeli television, where it premiered in June just as Apple bought the exclusive international rights, Tehran is a ticking clock drama about a covert Israeli operation inside Iran. The implacable adversaries are represented by Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan), a Mossad hacker smuggled into Iran to sabotage the country’s electricity grid before an air strike on its nuclear program, and Faraz Kamali (Shaun Toub), a Revolutionary Guards counter-intelligence officer who pursues the young woman when her mission goes awry.
With a plot based on geopolitical reality and grounded in tradecraft and betrayal, the eight-part series allows the characters to exist as people instead of symbols of their respective nations. Tehran places patriotism alongside self-doubt and never makes do with a heroes-and-villains outlook, which is no easy feat for an Israeli production since the two nations have long spoken of each other as a threat to be vanquished.
Read the article by Craig Mathieson in The Sydney Morning Herald.