‘Carthago’ and ‘Corduroy’ Become Latest Israeli Shows to Win Big Abroad

World War II comedy-drama ‘Carthago’ and character study ‘Corduroy’ claim major awards at France's Canneseries – but ‘Dead Ringers’ and a Danish acting legend run them close

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but two Israeli shows just won major awards at a television festival in France.

Regular readers of this column (thank you, sir, the check's in the post) may recall that last month saw three Israeli performers – Rotem Sela, Gal Malka and Eran Naim – deservedly walk away with acting awards for their work in the shows "A Body That Works" and "Innermost," respectively, at the brilliant Series Mania festival in Lille. Did I mention I was a juror there? What, I did? Several times? Okay, so I’ll shut up about it now.

Last week, the action shifted south to the sixth-annual Canneseries, where actors from two very different Israeli series were honored for their efforts in "Carthago" and "Corduroy."

I would love to report that I had a wonderful time watching shows when not strolling down the Croisette with a croissant in one hand and pain au chocolat in the other (I have always believed in a balanced diet), all the while chuckling at the sight of more oligarchs’ yachts being impounded in the marina.

Alas, I wasn't able to make it in person this year so had to suffice with watching the shows remotely from a distinctly less glamorous location: my home office. (Here's a pledge: I will be back on the French Riviera next year, because for me it is one of the most magical places on Earth during festival season – right up there with Edinburgh in August and Park City in January.)

Both Israeli shows have already debuted at home – "Carthago" on Kan public television (aka Channel 11) at the end of 2022 and "Corduroy" last month on Hot – and were making their overseas premieres at Cannes. (I’m guessing there's some strict law in France that says only film festivals can use a red carpet, because Canneseries has a rather fetching pink one, while Series Mania has a delightful purple one that is wonderfully soft underfoot, as any juror who has trodden it can tell you.)

"Carthago" actually won two prizes: the special interpretation award for key cast members (that must have kept the engravers busy) and the high school award for best series. That last prize was the one I found most interesting: the fact that a young French audience connected with a show that is more bonkers than a Fox News defamation settlement statement.

Honestly, if there's been a more offbeat Israeli show in the past 30 years, it has passed me by – because "Carthago" is as out-there as it gets. What's even more remarkable is that it's based on the true story of a World War II prison camp in deepest Africa, which the British set up in 1942 to house Nazis, Italian fascists and Jewish terrorists from what was then Brit-controlled Mandatory Palestine.

It's an ambitious period comedy-drama with Hebrew as just one of its languages. English comes a close second, in fact, although I could have done with far less of the omniscient narrator whose voiceover is meant to be humorous but never provoked laughter from me.

Luckily, the main characters are far more entertaining, whether they be the Tel Aviv comedian Elijah Levi – played by a winsome Uri Gov, whose main instruction appears to have been "Imagine how Sacha Baron Cohen would play this scene," especially when given lines such as "I’m not a terrorist, I’m an entertainer!" – who find himself imprisoned in the remote POW camp. Then there's the very-very-British Nazi spy Thomas Edinburgh (newcomer Oliver Buckner) and head of the Jewish prisoner group Jacob Dan (Reshef Levi), who generate many of the laughs.

There is also a familiar face to fans of British TV in the form of Philip Glenister, who for many will forever be Gene Hunt from the brilliant cop drama "Life on Mars" and here plays camp commander Lord James Davidson – hoping to extract crucial information from Nazi spy Edinburgh that could help the allies defeat Rommel in north Africa.

If you can imagine a broader version of Billy Wilder's classic wartime comedy "Stalag 17," peopled by Jews, Nazis and angry Scotsmen, then you’re partly on your way to understanding what "Carthago" is trying to be. It didn't always work for me, but there were enough laughs and intrigue to make me want to me hunt out the rest of the series.

"Corduroy," meanwhile, feels like it has been reverse-engineered from the HBO version of "Euphoria" (but not the low-budget original Israeli version, which also came from Hot back in 2012).

I’m not in a good position to comment on the character-study drama yet as I’ve only seen the first few episodes with Hebrew subtitles, and my Hebrew is only slightly better than my Esperanto (give me a break, I’ve only lived in the country for 15 years). What I can say is that the camera loves to focus intently on the face of lead actress Dar Zuzovsky, who is the latest in a long line of Israeli models to transition into acting.

She won the best performance award for her turn as Danielle, a high-tech worker who's more interested in getting high than helping her startup produce a killer video app. There's lots of sex, drugs and dating apps on display, but I will have to reserve judgment until I can better understand what the hell is going on during all that neon-saturated drama. For instance, does Danielle really describe herself as a "neuro-algorithmist"? I’d also love to understand the meaning of the title – and its connection to the preferred fabric of geography teachers the world over.

Another Israeli actress, Maya Landsman, also won the best performance award at Canneseries last year for her role in "The Lesson" (coming to ChaiFlicks in North America next month), so yet again – all hail all-conquering Israeli TV.

‘Dead Ringers’

The main thing that surprised me about Zuzovsky's triumph is that it came at the expense of Rachel Weisz – who delivers not one but two stunning performances as identical-twin obstetricians Elliott and Beverly Mantle in Prime Video's brilliant remake of David Cronenberg's 1988 movie "Dead Ringers." (I really don't mean this to sound sarcastic, but I’m sure it was a coincidence that the jury president was Lior "Fauda" Raz.)

Jeremy Irons played the gynecologist twins in the original, but this version is much more engaging. It is also – somewhat surprisingly – very, very funny. Weisz and creator Alice Birch have crafted a show bursting with ideas, humor and, of course, some of that disturbing body horror of the original. But they have also made it something more interesting about the commercialization of the medical world.

At times, this feels like a Bizarro World version of "Succession," where the business setting is fertility rather than the media and the investors are a hilariously unscrupulous bunch behind the opioid epidemic. It's jaw-dropping stuff, and the dinner party sequence in the second episode is going to be hard to shift from my top three favorite scenes of the year.

We take so much on-screen technology for granted these days and there's no better demonstration of that than here, where it feels like you are genuinely watching identical twins perform separate roles rather than Weisz doing double duty as the Mantle sisters, each equally appealing in their own carefully delineated way (wanton party animal Elliott vs. prim and sensible Beverly).

Yet as good as Weisz is in "Dead Ringers" (and she really is sensational), there was one performance I saw at Canneseries that I perhaps enjoyed even more: Sofie Gråbol as a prison guard in the Danish drama "Huset" ("Prisoner").

Even though Gråbol has appeared on our screens in plenty of shows over the past decade (though I have zero recollection of her in "The Undoing" with Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman, despite IMDb assuring me she was in it), for most non-Danes she will always be top cop Sarah Lund in three wonderful seasons of "The Killing."

I hadn't realized she was starring in "Prisoner" – surprises are one of the perks of being a critic, along with the amazing pay and undying respect of society-at-large. So, when she first appeared on screen, I felt like I was bumping into an old flame – and the magic was still there, even if that iconic patterned sweater had been traded in for a drab blue uniform.

It says something about the quality of "Prisoner" that Gråbol's Miriam is just one of many memorable characters on screen – in a show whose title questions who the real captives are here: the inmates or those guarding them, whose personal lives are every bit as bleak as you would hope in a top-notch Scandi drama.

"Carthago" is available in Israel via the Kan website, while "Corduroy" is on Hot VOD. All six episodes of "Dead Ringers" are available now on Prime Video. Fingers crossed that "Prisoner" breaks out of Denmark soon.