Netflix ★★★✩✩
Reviewed by Josh Howie
Why do they call it melodrama? It’s like the total opposite of mellow!” Probably won’t open a comedy gig with that, but watching The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem did make me reflect on the easily dismissed genre. Not that I initially knew that’s what I was watching. Going in cold, I assumed this to be a prestige historical drama. Classy title sequence? Check. Kicking off with a traumatic historical injustice? Check. Jews? Check, check, check. Jew quota is through the roof. Then it took me most of the first hour episode to figure out that all the elements that seemed a bit off, the dash of cheese, snippet of schmaltz, the sprinkle of hammy acting, were actually meant to be part of the recipe. I hadn’t even known you could make a Jewish version of this dish, by substituting turkey ham.
It’s fair to say that in our day-to-day Jews can be a bit drama queeny, or, to put it another way, our people have a tendency to overcook normal situations. Oy vey! Yet when it comes to entertainment, and maybe this has something to do with the overriding subject matter available in the diaspora, it usually takes the form of earnest drama or comedy. The existence of Israel changes all of that though, opening up a wider range of Jewish experience or, as Israelis call it, experience.
That’s not to say the setting isn’t specific; this is a story very much told through the shifting history of Jerusalem. From 1917 under the Ottoman Empire, through the British Mandate and into independence, the Spanish Sephardi Ermoza family are tracked back and forth across the generations. It’s fascinating seeing the melting pot bubble away, especially Jew on Jew. At a time when some Jewish parents would now consider themselves lucky if their child found love with a person who likes bagels, who knew that only a century ago Sephardi Jews were so damningly dismissive of the Ashkenazi, including racist fears of contaminating the bloodline.
In contrast, the themes are universal; forbidden love, rebellious teens, betrayal. The plot, taken from the bestselling book of the same name, could mostly happen anywhere. Take away the beautiful Jerusalem light and you’ve got a Brazilian telenovela. In Israel the 20-plus half-hour episodes went out daily like a soap opera, before Netflix reformatted them to the ten longer episodes for international distribution. It’s a shame, as I’d suggest that taking this for what it is, in the original format, would’ve served the series best.
Terrible character-ageing makeup and lamentable British accents would’ve been more forgivable. Uncertainty of what the story’s about and even who the story’s about, more understandable. The moreish quality more refined in smaller chunks. Even the world’s greatest Jewish mother and the world’s worst dirty talk would be funnier when seen as tongue-in-cheek. With all that in mind from the start, you might have a blast. For me though, by the end of episode three, I knew if this was set in Brazil, I’d never’ve made it that far.
