Over the last decade or so, geopolitical tensions across the globe have caused an indirect but detrimental effect on basically every aspect of life. Media-wide productions, from talk shows, to films, and TV shows, have also experienced ripples through the increasing scrutiny from studios and the audience. Cases like Melissa Barrera’s firing from Scream 7 and the infamous suspension of Jimmy Kimmel are some of the situations that indicate a tipping point of censorship has been reached. More recently, two Apple TV+ shows have also been hit by waves of uncertainty surrounding their release. Jessica Chastain’s The Savant – about a woman who infiltrates extremist groups to try to prevent mass casualties – has been shelved indefinitely without an official statement by the streamer.
A similar path, but with an opposite outcome, has unfolded for Niv Sultan’s Tehran. The show’s second season premiered in 2022, with a third being filmed swiftly after. But, since the show’s central narrative about tensions between Israel and Iran started to mirror real-world events, Season 3’s release was delayed indefinitely. While it had a limited release in Israel, Apple has announced that Tehran is finally returning worldwide on January 9. But this isn’t as simple as a return, it’s a repositioning of the show by taking a stance on the relevance and necessity of telling its story.
‘Tehran’ Reinvents Itself in Season 3 To Tell a Story About Survival
Image via Apple TV+
Through Sultan’s Tamar Rabinyan, Tehran puts a Mossad agent front-and-center on a life-threatening mission. Her Iranian roots facilitate her infiltrating the country, while working secretly for the Israeli agency to sabotage their air defense – facilitating a way for Israel to take down an Iranian nuclear plant. Season 1 sees Tamar barely succeed on her mission, only for the Mossad to cancel the planned attack. During Season 2, Tamar’s allegiance quavers as she resorts to allies on both sides to carry out one last rescue mission before escaping Iran.
When the mission goes askew, Tamar is left resourceless to fend for herself. Tehran’s repositioning involves Tamar having to go rogue just to stay alive in Season 3. By raising the stakes, the show is evolving from political drama to a psychological thriller. With Tamar being persecuted by Iran, and left alone by Israel, Tehran doesn’t fall into the propaganda trap. There are no good guys in her story, only two warring factions that are tormenting their inhabitants’ lives with each passing day.
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‘Tehran’s Season 3 Release Went From Delayed to Unavoidable
Tehran’s delays might have seemed unfortunate in the past. In hindsight, they were but a stepping stone into taking the show in a bold new direction. With everything that’s happened in the last few years – or months, for that matter – Season 3 of Tehran arrives just in time, when the landscape of media is in need to cover these tensely delicate topics. A grounded thriller with international stakes like this is what audiences nowadays crave. It is through its multilingual realism and its morally compromised characters that Tehran transcends from simple entertainment to a product that enables people to digest the political context of the world.
Thus, it’s not that surprising that Tehran is currently rising in the charts ahead of the Season 3 release. And while the season’s story has been out there since its release a year ago in Israel, this only proves there’s a rising interest to see how Tamar handles being on her own this time around – making the season’s release unavoidable. Ensuring Tehran’s permanence and relevance, Apple also announced the show’s renewal for a fourth season ahead of the Season 3 release. As expected, director Daniel Syrkin has stated that the Season 4 storyline has been adapted to consider the outcome of the Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel that happened earlier this year.
The evolution of Tehran since its 2020 release has transformed it into essential viewing to get a pragmatic glimpse of what’s transpiring on the other side of the world. After the real-world events that have brought a spike in geopolitical tension, Tehran is ready to cement itself as more than a groundbreaking drama. It has become an espionage thriller that feels urgent, destabilizing, and emotionally costly in a way that very few shows are willing to do right now.
Release Date
June 27, 2020
Network
Kan 11
Directors
Daniel Syrkin
Writers
Omri Shenhar
