Rough Diamonds is a seven out of ten but as we at the JC use a different scale, do join me in deliberating whether it deserves three or four stars.

Set in the diamond industry of Antwerp, the opening scene of this eight-episode crime drama is certainly arresting: a young Charedi man wakes up, goes about his morning and then takes his own life.

The physical Jewish detail is well done. Our man has peyot, wears tzitzit, and when he gets out of the bed he does not share with his young wife, he says the blessings and washes his hands.

And yet because the acting and filming is done so well, he looks like a man in crisis.

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Suffering siblings: Ini Massez as Adina Glazer and Kevin Janssens as Noah Wolfson (Netflix)

So shkoyach to non-Jewish Flemish producer Pieter Van Huych who having come up with the idea of enmeshing a Jewish diamond family, the Wolfsons, in any Albanian mob, then proceeded to do six years’ careful research, even bringing Jewish authenticity coaches on set, so the characters could just get on with their telling their story .

But does the story they tell actually deliver? To a point.

Long-lost estranged son is back in town following the death of his brother. His family is in crisis.

Will he stay and help? Will his new irreligious life catch up with him? Enter a no-nonsense female cop and, shtreimels and Albanian gang life nothwithstanding, there is little here that you have not seen played out on the screen countless times.

The dialogue, the drama and the crime scenes, they all feel familiar

The pacing between these scenes is also a little off, with filler interspersing random bursts of action. You could almost give up watching. But that would be a shame because the Fauda writing team does bring it together at the end. We’re tipping toward four stars, here.

But then there’s the problem of Kevin Janssens playing Noah Wolfson, the prodigal son. Half of the cast in this show is Jewish, apparently, but however many Jews they hired, this guy would tip the scales. He’s just wrong.

However much I squinted I couldn’t see him as a former member of the Charedi community. So, we’re going with three stars, people.

Harsh perhaps, maybe, but have I mentioned the mother-in-law’s cockney accent? We’ll leave it there.


Rough Diamonds
Netflix ★★★✩✩