The Mediator: Israel’s Answer to The Sopranos?

This week in Israel, television’s The Mediator returns for its third season. We normally don’t discuss television on the site, but it’s worth mentioning that there is a significant television series ideas output that is landing in the U.S. It was announced that Fox has acquired the rights for an American remake. Quite a few Israeli TV shows found their ways to American smaller screens in recent years via remakes (the most known would be In Treatment), but this particular case is a little bit weird, for the creators themselves admit to be have been inspired by such American crime myths as The Sopranos and The Godfather. It’s sort of like receiving a gift and then giving it back with a different wrapping paper. That’s not to say that Israeli T.V doesn’t have an original bone in their writing. On the contrary, the creative team is comprised of A list writers, directors and actors:

The head creative mind behind the project is Reshef Levi, Director of the feature film Lost Islands, which brought Michael Moshonov his first Israeli Academy Award). Levi manages to mix a tough crime drama with plenty of humor. The story revolves around Nadav (Yehuda Levi from Yossi and Jagger fame), a criminologist working in unconventional methods, who opens up his own adoption file only to find out that he is the illegitimate son of Baruch Asulin, AKA The Mediator (played by Moshe Ivgi, maybe the most celebrated screen actor in Israel, who also became a director this year, with the amazing On The Third Day, (mentioned here), the head of a well known crime family. In the process of getting to know his real father, Nadav slowly is drown into the crime world. The cliffhanger ending the second season involved Nadav committing his first kill.

In the ensemble cast there’s also Maya Maron, who plays Nadav’s fiancée, Hana Azoulai Hasfari (7 Days) who plays the mediator’s wife, Neta Garti (Turn Left at the End of the World), who plays the mediator’s son’s lover, and Anya Bukstein (The Secrets), who plays Nadav’s lover. All cast members are at the top of the game, and with professional writing and directing, The Mediator is a funny and exciting rollercoaster ride though the streets of the crime world – it should translate well no matter what language, setting or country it gets remade in. Here’s the Season Three trailer.