For the past couple of years, Saturday nights on BBC4 have been the home of Danish drama The Killing – the atmospheric, slow moving but compelling thriller which has acquired a cult audience regardless of the subtitles.
But now there is a new kid on the block. Saturday evenings on BBC4 have been given over to a different type of foreign language drama – Hostages – an Israeli thriller just as gripping as The Killing although in a very different way. The series tells the story of an Israeli surgeon whose family is taken hostage the night before she is due to perform surgery on the Israeli prime minister. She is told that her husband and children will be released only if the prime minister dies while in hospital.
You may already have seen the American adaptation of Hostages, although If you did you would probably have been underwhelmed. Viewing figures tailed off steadily through the series and it was cancelled after the first season. But reaction to the original Israeli version has been altogether different. Reviewers have raved about the acting, directing and the build-up of tension.
If Scandi drama is characterised by stark drama under grey skies, the two most popular examples of the Israeli genre – Hostages and Prisoners of War, which was adapted in the US as Homeland – are both political thrillers. And they are both far superior to the multi-million dollar, star-studded adaptations they spawned. This is because whereas the American adaptations rely on fast cutting and action sequences to draw in massive audiences by appealing to the lowest common denominator, the Israeli dramas tak e time to develop characters and add real depth to the drama – a formula which has been used in the best Scandi dramas and a select few American series like The Wire and Mad Men. The Israelis, by trusting their audience, have made their shows so absorbing that audiences become hooked for the duration,
