If you enjoyed the hit Israeli series Fauda then the new Netflix series Hit and Run needs to be on your radar.
Hit and Run is the brainchild of Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, the creative duo behind Fauda.
This time the action moves from Tel Aviv to New York.
Most of the dialogue is in English.
As their first collaboration, there are so many plot twists and suspense, it is guaranteed you will be glued to your seat for the entire nine-episode first season. And there is no doubt that there will be a second season just judging by the last episode’s ending.
Not Everything Is as It Seems
Raz and Issacharoff had based their international hit Fauda on their shared experiences in an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Mista’arvim unit. Mista’arvim units are specially trained and tasked with working undercover and assimilating in the Arab areas.
In Hit and Run, the creative pair take their experiences in a different direction. Raz plays Segev Azulai, a divorced father of an 11-year-old daughter Ella (Neta Orbach). He runs a tour guide service out of Tel Aviv and has remarried to an American dancer Danielle Azulai (Kaelen Ohm) who works for the prestigious Bat Sheva Dance Company.
Things go awry when Danielle leaves for a big audition in New York and is then killed in a hit-and-run auto accident. The car had been reported stolen from a Tel Aviv organized crime figure just prior to the accident. Yet, surveillance cameras in the area catch the two male drivers. And that’s when the story goes turns much more sinister.
The two men were in Tel Aviv on Hungarian passports, but just after Danielle was killed, they bordered a flight to London.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyF-EQVs9mU&w=560&h=315
That night, his wife’s personal effects are returned and Segev notices several missed calls and text messages from an unknown phone. As he’s looking it over, the phone rings again. He answers it and a male voice comes on the other end.
A couple of hours later a man breaks into his home. Segev and the man fight and Segev kills him by snapping his neck, displaying a level of fighting prowess that the average Tel Aviv tour guide wouldn’t possess.
After doing some digging with the help of his homicide detective cousin, Tali Shapira (Moran Rosenblatt), Segev finds out that the phone calling his wife belongs to a man named Assaf (Lior Ashkenazy) an unhappily married Mossad director. That’s when the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper.
Danielle’s grieving father is played by the American actor Gregg Henry, so the viewer suspects that there has to be a subplot involving him. The always excellent Sanaa Lathan plays an investigative reporter and Segev’s former flame.
‘Hit and Run’ Is a Thrill of a Series
The twists and turns come fast and furious as Segev wants to learn why was his wife killed.
The character development is crafted through the use of several flashbacks as we see how Segev and Danielle met and later married.
The action is fast and furious, with some brutal fistfights and car chases through the streets of Tel Aviv and New York. It has the same kind of feel that Fauda had with the characters seemingly always under surveillance by unseen undercover agents. This is achieved by the camera zooming and panning, which adds to the suspense.
The actual idea for Hit and Run came about in 2015. As Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz met for lunch in Tel Aviv, while filming Fauda, they began a recent hit-and-run incident. And then an idea was born: What if it wasn’t a “tragic accident” but a conspiracy with family secrets and political intrigue.
Check out Hit and Run on Netflix. But make sure you clear a block of several hours before you do, because it is going to draw you in and hold you captive… (heel stomp).
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