TV review: Fauda has oodles of blackmail and deception and it's back for season four
Fauda is back for a fourth season on Netflix
“You’re off the case McGarnagle!” It’s my favourite line in — a harpoon into every maverick cop cliché going. McGarnagle was basically Clint Eastwood, the troubled maverick cop who couldn’t toe the line.
Doron is McGarnagle in the outstanding , back for a fourth season on Netflix. He’s a big angry cliché himself, divorced, troubled, at war with his colleagues in the undercover Israeli unit specialising in operating in Arab areas.
But as Dominic West proved with Jimmy McNulty in , you can pivot a good story around a cliché if the acting is good enough. Lior Raz, who plays Doron, is certainly good enough. And if that isn’t enough, he co-writes the show as well.
Fauda is usually confusing at the start of every season: you have to piece it together yourself. That’s missing here and we’re dumped into what looks like a straightforward story. Doron’s colleague and friend Gabi is kidnapped by a Hezbollah unit in Brussels, when Doron is tagging along as a kind of free-lance bodyguard. (He’s officially retired, or off-the-case as McGarnagle would call it.) Doron’s former unit arrives in Belgium, scoops him back into the fold, and an edge-of-the-seat shoot-em-up rescue operation ensues. This at least is familiar to fans of the show, but I felt it lacked the tension and confusion of early seasons.
Actually, it just took a few episodes to find its feet. By the third hour I was scratching my confused head, in a good way.
The story twists and turns as, with trademark oodles of blackmail and deception, the unit closes in on the terrorists who kidnapped their colleague.
Of course, one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. is an Israeli show, giving their side of the story of the conflict with Palestinians. So while there’s merciless brutality on both sides, we get to spend time at home with the Israeli characters, meet their kids, see them as people. The Palestinians and Lebanese characters in this story are 'thinner', given less time on screen and it can feel like we’re being invited to view them as dangerous and desperate.
But if there is a message in among the chaos, it’s that non-stop conflict is really just non-stop misery for everyone involved. You wouldn’t say anyone is enjoying this, and it’s nicely done the way the aging head of Doron’s unit tells his boss that he’s exhausted and wants out.
Even Doron ‘McGarnagle’ seems more disgruntled than ever. He draws what seems like a suicide mission on himself, travelling into Lebanon to hunt down the man who killed his friend. Or did he? There are always gaps in the information with . You think you know what’s coming next, but you also wonder if the writers are leading you on.
Like all great spy and undercover dramas — or — keeps you guessing. Guessing what’s going on and guessing if there are any good or bad guys when it comes to war. It started slowly this time, but I’m back on the case McGarnagle.
