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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 4:19:04 GMT 10
the Israeli series on which "Homeland " is based, even though there are major differences in the storyline....certainly not an action-jackson series like Homeland with a swashbuckling mercurial femme Jack Bauer come to save us all from the putrid musso terrorists, but amazingly thoughtful and well-written.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2013 6:58:49 GMT 10
I have been recording it for later viewing, though I stuffed up episode 5...
I will watch all when the series ends.
Just finished watching 'Hunted' recently shown on SBS...quite liked that.
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Post by pim on Feb 19, 2013 8:02:53 GMT 10
I've been watching it too, Colonel. I think it pisses on "Homeland". More nuanced and layered.
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 9:45:06 GMT 10
chances are you can get the #5 still on the SBS on demand...but not sure if u can save it...probably there is a Torrent set for it.
SPOILER :the "Iris" character threw me for a loop, even there obviously HAD to be something wrong with a major babe like that that pushes that hard to pick you up, at a cemetary, no less.
Lovely looking girl, though, if a little skinny.
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Post by pim on Feb 19, 2013 9:50:17 GMT 10
She really worked hard at picking the guy up didn't she. Wasn't at all surprised that it turned out to be a set-up. Mind you it kinda followed! Nothing is as it seems in this series. I like the "code" that the two returned prisoners use to communicate with - the finger tapping thing.
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 9:51:54 GMT 10
She really worked hard at picking the guy up didn't she. Wasn't at all surprised that it turned out to be a set-up. Mind you it kinda followed! Nothing is as it seems in this series. I like the "code" that the two returned prisoners use to communicate with - the finger tapping thing. yeah, the old trick from the Korean War POW 'confession" vids, where it was eye-blinking code... difference here is it is used to pull the wool over the eyes of their own people... |
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 9:54:32 GMT 10
She really worked hard at picking the guy up didn't she. Wasn't at all surprised that it turned out to be a set-up. Mind you it kinda followed! Nothing is as it seems in this series. I like the "code" that the two returned prisoners use to communicate with - the finger tapping thing. Jesus Christ no sheila who looks like that pushes THAT hard on a dude...hes no dill,the old Uri, maybe hes a wake-up to her as a plant anyway.. she handled his wife nicely at the wake, too, didnt she..stuck it right up her with her parting comment. |
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Post by pim on Feb 19, 2013 10:11:27 GMT 10
She was his ex-fiancée who'd gone and married his brother during the years of captivity. Another layer in what is a very multi-layered narrative. Here's a review in the New York Times comparing Homeland with Prisoners of War www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/arts/television/prisoners-of-war-the-israeli-original-of-homeland.html?_r=0The ties that bind Showtime’s “Homeland” and the Israeli show “Prisoners of War” are unusually strong. The deal to remake the Israeli original for American television was struck even before it was filmed, and Gideon Raff, creator of “Prisoners of War,” was an executive producer of “Homeland.” He is now working on the second seasons of both.
Yoram Tolledano, top left, and Ishai Golan as freed Israelis in “Prisoners of War"
So what’s most interesting in watching “Prisoners of War” — now having its American premiere online on Hulu — is how different the two series are, despite their symbiotic relationship. The question of which is better comes up, of course, especially given the praise each has received, but it’s not that important. Or rather, the shows have been shaped with such varied intents that the question doesn’t have a definitive answer. The difference between the series can be summed up, superficially but accurately, by saying that “Prisoners of War” is about soldiers, while “Homeland” is about Claire Danes. The American show has focused on Ms. Danes’s high-wire performance as a troubled C.I.A. officer, and has emphasized detection and suspense over everyday events.
The Israeli show has political-thriller elements, but it’s really an ensemble drama in which the cloak-and-dagger side is secondary to a naturalistic study of the effects of torture, absence and return on ordinary men and their families.
The contrast can be seen immediately in the more complicated setup of “Prisoners of War.” Two Israeli soldiers come home, rather than one American, as in “Homeland”: Nimrode (Yoram Tolledano) returns to an adoring wife and two children who barely remember him; Uri (Ishai Golan) to a former fiancée who married his brother after he was abducted. A third story line involves the sister of another captive who did not make it back alive; refusing to accept his death, she sees and hears him around her and risks being institutionalized. Meanwhile, there is no equivalent to Ms. Danes’s Carrie Mathison character, the government operative who suspects that the returning prisoner may have been subverted by his captives and turned into a terrorist. (One will emerge, eventually, but with a much smaller role.) There is a skeptic, in the person of Haim (Gal Zaid), an army psychologist who “rehabilitates” Nimrode and Uri by virtually reimprisoning them while interrogating them about their captivity, and who finds their behavior suspicious. But throughout the season this part of the plot never outweighs the family stories. (Two of the show’s 10 first-season episodes are online at Hulu, with new episodes posting on Saturdays.)
It’s clear from its spare look that “Prisoners of War” operated on a more slender production budget than “Homeland,” and it makes greater use of conventional TV storytelling methods, like fake news reports and cheaply manipulative music. But its slower, quieter, more contemplative approach feels more like a stylistic than financial choice, and the relationships among characters, especially family members, are often more finely drawn and more plausible than in the American show. (“Prisoners” also gains texture because the soldiers’ captivity lasted 17 years, twice that of “Homeland” — the adult characters, separated in their teens or early 20s, are now approaching 40.)
“Homeland,” primarily developed and written by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, had more flamboyant pleasures, beginning with the gritty, scintillating performances of Ms. Danes and of Mandy Patinkin as her C.I.A. mentor. It also maintained a truly tense conspiracy-thriller narrative, at least at the beginning and end of its 12-episode first season. It was one of the best new shows of the past season and deserves its Emmy nominations for best drama and best lead actress. In some ways the relationship of “Homeland” to “Prisoners” mirrored that of “The Killing,” on AMC, to the Danish show from which it was adapted, “Forbrydelsen.” In each case the American show was glossier, more driven by mystery and paranoia and notable primarily for a pair of bravura performances (in the case of “The Killing,” those of Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton as grieving parents).
But the emphasis in “Homeland” on suspense and on the Carrie question — brilliant? paranoid? brilliantly paranoid? — had one significant casualty: the fine actor Damian Lewis, who struggled to make sense of Nicholas Brody, the Marine who had indeed been converted to the terrorist cause. In “Prisoners” the blustery Nimrode and the fragile, haunted Uri are an entirely believable team — you can see how they complement and depend on each other, how their shared horror and humiliation have made them fit together. In “Homeland” the two captives (along with some aspects of the third) have been collapsed into Brody, and despite Mr. Lewis’s best efforts, the character doesn’t quite add up. Brody’s opacity and silent brooding feel arbitrary, and even some plot details, like the use of finger tapping for communication, make less sense in “Homeland” than they do in “Prisoners.” The cast members of “Prisoners” may not be at the unusually high level, for TV, of Ms. Danes, Mr. Patinkin and Mr. Lewis, but they do excellent, generally understated work, notably Yaël Abecassis as Nimrode’s painfully devoted wife and Yael Eitan as his daughter, a more casually, and therefore more realistically, irritating character than her counterpart in “Homeland.” (Also good is Mili Avital as Uri’s onetime fiancée; American viewers may recognize her from her starring role in the original “Stargate” movie.)
Hulu’s showing of “Prisoners” has a significance beyond the merits of the show itself: It’s a rare case of a TV series’s being presented in America in a foreign language — in this case Hebrew — with English subtitles, even if only online. (It follows Netflix’s subtitled presentation of the Norwegian-language Steven Van Zandt vehicle “Lilyhammer.”) Of course both “Prisoners” and the Danish “Forbrydelsen” were TV hits in their original language in Britain, where apparently audiences are more willing to read, or perhaps less likely to be multitasking. Perhaps “Prisoners” will get the same consideration here after Season 2. It appears that Americans don't like movies with subtitles ... ;D |
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 10:32:17 GMT 10
well, better/worse, such questions.
Point is, you can run Homeland on Channel 10 Sunday night prime-time.
You cant, with Israeli "POW's...virtually all dialogue in Hebrew with s/ts is one issue, just as much or more is the slowness of it, or i should say, it is Patience -intensive.
so u cant sell that in commercial prime-time..
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 10:36:24 GMT 10
One thing I didnt get fully, Casu, is the "his head looks like a penis" remark, and how it stung Haim...of course he'd heard the remark b4, in the reminisces by Uri and Nimrode..
but why was it a penny dropping with him ?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2013 10:57:00 GMT 10
well, better/worse, such questions. Point is, you can run Homeland on Channel 10 Sunday night prime-time. You cant, with Israeli "POW's...virtually all dialogue in Hebrew with s/ts is one issue, just as much or more is the slowness of it, or i should say, it is Patience -intensive. so u cant sell that in commercial prime-time..  |
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 11:00:01 GMT 10
well, better/worse, such questions. Point is, you can run Homeland on Channel 10 Sunday night prime-time. You cant, with Israeli "POW's...virtually all dialogue in Hebrew with s/ts is one issue, just as much or more is the slowness of it, or i should say, it is Patience -intensive. so u cant sell that in commercial prime-time..
No warbird pictures, and not even any teenage girls being dismembered on train tracks. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2013 11:01:32 GMT 10
Go and pull the wings off some more flies.
It must be your favourite intelligent pastime, eh? 
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Post by pim on Feb 19, 2013 11:08:28 GMT 10
well, better/worse, such questions. Point is, you can run Homeland on Channel 10 Sunday night prime-time. You cant, with Israeli "POW's...virtually all dialogue in Hebrew with s/ts is one issue, just as much or more is the slowness of it, or i should say, it is Patience -intensive. so u cant sell that in commercial prime-time.. KTJ go and jump of a cliff, or stick your head in the dunny cistern and press "flush", or be a good little Jack Horner and have a quiet wank in the corner - or something. You obviously have never heard of the show "Prisoners of War" and are totally clueless of the issues it canvasses. So STFU. |
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Post by chequeredflaggg on Feb 19, 2013 11:52:33 GMT 10
Yael Eitan as his daughter, a more casually, and therefore more realistically, irritating character than her counterpart in “Homeland.” (Also good is Mili Avital as Uri’s onetime fiancée; American viewers may recognize her from her starring role in the original “Stargate” movie.)
thats a good observation...the naughty daughter is more casually annoying, therefore more realistically...not like that excruciating daughter in Homeland.
although, we have been conditioned to believe that many teenagers really are more than "casually" annoying..
funny that the send-up of her on SNL or wtf it was, worked far better than the actor sending up Carrie..
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