Show: B'Tulot (Maidens)

[hagar_972]

Today I'm here to promote a show. Anybody want a show about a female police officer, with a good marriage, a child and solid friendships with other women, working to solve the (supernatural) mystery of her sister's disappearance, and older men be damned? For bonus points, the cast is overwhelmingly non-White.

If so, then I got a show for you.

When a woman’s body is found in the mountains above sleepy resort town Eilat, it turns out to be the body of Maya Rajouan, sister of local Foreigners Dept. officer, Shelly Rajouan (Maggie Azarzer). Maya has been missing-presumed-dead for 17 years, but she’s only just died, no signs of violence or maltreatment on her body. Investigating Maya Rajouan’s death are Shelly’s commander Neri (Moris Cohen) and his right hand, Major Crimes detective Karnit (Rotem Abouhab) - who is also involved in another case of Shelly’s: the mysterious drowning of three asylum seekers and even more mysterious survival of a fourth.

But neither case may be what it seems to. Shelly smells a mystery. Assisting Shelly are rookie officer Roy (Roy Nick), a recent transfer from Tel Aviv; her husband Haim (Tzahi Halevi); and the childhood best friend of Maya and her, Elinor (Efrat Dor). Shelly is determined to find out the truth, and she isn’t going to let anyone stop her: whether her fellow cops, her father Uzi (Sasson Gabai) or his best friend Hefetz (Alon Aboutboul).

+ All the women (primarily ages 30-40)
+ Relationships between women
+ Good marriages
+ Predominantly non-White cast
+ Low likelihood of gore and express violence
+ Takes on issue of race and immigration; first episode is grounds for cautious optimism

So far only one episode came out, but it looks real good and both the production house and the creators have good reputaitons. The cast's kickass - lots of big-name actors, and the creators very cheerfully say they let their lead have the final say on people cast as her character's family and friends.

As you may have figured out by now, the show's not in English - but that's what fansubs are for. You can find the first episode here (link), streaming. (Stream can be downloaded with the appropriate browser extensions.) Expected run is 9-10 episodes.

Comments

[msilverstar]

This looks like something I could watch with my mom! The streaming site defeats me though, are there any instructions for using it with Firefox on Mac OS X? I can't install any apps unless I am very sure they aren't malware.

[hagar_972]

You shouldn't have to install anything to watch the streaming. If you want to capture the stream and save it to your harddrive, I'm using NetVideoHunter extension on Firefox and can verify it's not malware.

If getting to the stream is confusing:

* On the first page, there will be an orange countdown button that after ~5sec changes to "Continue". When it says continue, click it. (There's a mock video above that, do not click that.)

* A still of the video will load. There will be an ad over it. Locate the grey X to close the ad. (The "watch in HD" thing is an ad. Don't click any "play" buttons until you closed the ad.)

* Hit play! The video will load once it buffers.

To capture the stream:

* Click the blue NetVideoHunter button in the toolbar
* Bottom-right corner, click "Options"
* Chose the folder you want to save the file to
* Now click "download" next to the appropriate content in the left bar
* This will now behave like a regular Firefox download

The video doesn't need to buffer or play all the way through to be downloaded. Usually I wait for it to start playing, hit pause and that's enough.

Hope this helps!

[ernads]

one thing to be aware off - it ends with a hell of a cliffy,and I suspect every episode will end this way.

[msilverstar]

Thank you SO MUCH for the instructions! I've been looking for something like NetVideoHunter as well.