This summer, Hulu began streaming Hatufim (Prisoners of War), the Israeli show Homeland is based on. And while I’m always excited for new devotees of Israeli television, I noticed a strange phenomenon: people commenting on the relative unattractiveness of the Israeli actors in comparison to their Homeland counterparts. In fact, a similar thing happened when I was writing weekly recaps about the Israeli TV show Srugim—there were a few commenters who repeatedly popped up to air their opinion on the female characters lack of hotness.

Look, people are the worst. But they may sort of have a point. It is true that American TV stars, with their airbrushed perfect skin and glossy hair, are better kempt and more conventionally attractive than their Israeli counterparts. That’s partly due to the much lower production budget for Israeli TV, and partly because Israeli media lacks an US Weekly-style obsessive cataloging of every actresses’ baby weight or latest wrinkle.

And while some might prefer everyone onscreen to look like Bar Refaeli, there’s something comforting and refreshing about the every-guy quality of Israeli TV actors, who really look like people you might see on the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. I mean, would you really trust a CIA operative as attractive as Claire Danes? I have never seen anyone with such shiny hair in Foggy Bottom.

Danes’ character has no exact analogue on Hatufim, but as I pointed out a few weeks ago, the great Israeli Hollywood takeover has lots of Israeli and American actors playing the same characters. Cultural differences aside, some actors manage to bring more believability to their roles than others. To see how the Americans stack up against the originals, here’s a side-by-side comparison.

Show: In Treatment/B’Tipul
Character: Psychologist

Israeli version: One of Israeli’s most iconic actors, Assi Dayan—son of famed eye patch-wearing foreign minister Moshe Dayan!—plays Dr. Reuven Dagan. The therapist’s office may be a bit run down and his clothes slightly rumpled, but even while his inner life is in turmoil he still conveys his commitment to his patients.

American Version: Gabriel Byrne plays Dr. Paul Weston, with an Irish brogue that lends gravitas to everything he says. His long silences and distant looks instill confidence—as do his well-tailored suits.

Most Realistic: Byrne. He’s easy to imagine as one of those annoying therapists on the Upper East Side who doesn’t take insurance and makes you pay upfront.

Show: Traffic Light/Ramzor
Character: Type A Wife

Israel: Yael Sharoni—who also starred in Srugim, my favorite show about the love lives of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem—plays Lilach Itzkovich-Yafa, the overly opinionated wife of the henpecked Itzko. Her verbal (and implied physical) abuse is a running joke throughout.

America: Liza Lapira plays Lisa Reilly. Lapira is a talented actress, but because the showrunners don’t think America can handle an unlikeable woman, the character is watered down to a bland nothing.

Most Realistic: Sharoni. She was born to play a Grade-A bitch. Plus, Srugim!

Show: Homeland/Hatufim
Character: Returning POWs

Israel: Yoram Toledano and Ishai Golan play Nimrod Klein and Uri Zach, two Israeli soldiers returning home after being held in captivity in Lebanon for 17 years.

America: Damian Lewis is Nicholas Brody, an American soldier who has been held by Al-Qaida since 2003.

Most Realistic: Yoram and Uri. The two must have lost a significant amount of weight to look as emaciated as they do and they never lose their haunted look throughout the season. While I adore Damian Lewis, the man doesn’t even have bags under his eyes.

Show: In Treatment/B’Tipul
Character: A patient going to therapy with his wife to decide whether or not to have an abortion.

Israel: I don’t remember much about Rami Heuberger’s performance as Michael. Just that the character was all kinds of awful.

America: Dan Rydell Will Gardner Josh Charles plays Jake, with a penchant for denim and an unfortunate mustache and goatee.

Most realistic: Josh Charles because he is the king of office Passover seders and all things Baltimore.

Show: Homeland/Hatufim
Character: The older, wiser intelligence officer.

Israel: Gal Zaid is Haim Cohen, who is convinced the two returning abductees have a secret they aren’t sharing.

America: Mandy Patinkin steals the show as Saul Berenson‬‬, Carrie’s mentor and erstwhile defender. ‬‬

Most Realistic: Mandy Patinkin, holla

Previously: Is That a Falafel in My Situation Comedy?

The post Reality Check: The Israeli vs. American Actors of ‘Homeland’ and ‘In Treatment’ appeared first on Jewcy.

When Homeland returns for a second season this Sunday night, it will be able to boast a bevy of Emmy’s and claim Barack Obama as a fanboy. But perhaps its most noted distinction is indirectly leading to the creation of America’s new catchphrase—“Mandy Patinkin, holla.” As I’m sure you know, Homeland is an adaptation of the Israeli TV series Hatufim, Prisoners of War, and is only one in a flood of programming coming out of the Israeli-Hollywood pipeline. Just last week Universal Television bought rights to The Gordin Cell, a series following former Russian intelligence agents reintegrating themselves in Israel.

There have been various hypotheses offered for the recent obsession with Israeli television: Israelis, they’re just like us! 9/11! And inevitably—Jews run Hollywood. Showtime and HBO as well as all the major networks have at least one Israeli television adaptation in the works.

But the Israeli TV shopping spree hasn’t been particularly discriminatory and results vary: The sitcom The Ex-List was canceled after only four episodes, and the reality show 3 got the axe after two. And while the success and failure of a show can be a crapshoot, there does seem to be a pattern in whether or not a series has crossover success.

America has a long history of adapting TV shows from other countries. Iconic American classics such as All in the Family and Three’s Company were modeled on British shows. More recently, the U.K. has given us the soon-to-be-put-out-of-its-misery series, The Office, as well as NBC’s Prime Suspect and MTV’s Skins—both failures. In the hunt for new ideas, producers have turned to other countries; AMC’s The Killing, for example, was based on a popular Danish program.

Sharon Shaif, who co-edited the book Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders and is currently writing a book on Israeli reality television, told me that traditionally, the rule of thumb when scouring for potential crossover hits is to find programs that are “culturally neutral” and adhere to established formulas. For Israel, though, the lesson has been almost the opposite. The Israeli shows that have succeeded in the United States have been steeped in Israeli cultural concerns, from war and terrorism to the specter of the Holocaust.

HBO’s In Treatment, the most successful Israeli crossover before Homeland, is a case in point. Adapted from the Israeli hit B’tipul, the show centers on a psychologist, with each episode depicting a therapy session. The patients in the Israeli version included a pilot, whose father is a Holocaust survivor, grappling with having bombed an Arab school; a couple deciding whether or not to have an abortion; and a childless woman in her 30s from a traditionally conservative Mizrachi family. The U.S. script follows the Israeli version almost word-for-word, only changing Israel-specific details, such as turning the pilot into an Iraqi war veteran.

Hatufim, which aired on Arutz 2 in 2010, is even more predicated on the Israeli context. The show revolves around the return of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers who were held in captivity in Lebanon for 17 years, and thus hits on one of Israel’s most sensitive nerves: the culture of the abducted soldier. While the series was successful, it had many detractors, who accused writer and director Gideon Raff of exploiting the issue at a time when Gilad Shalit was still in captivity.

Though Raff consulted on the U.S. version and serves as its executive producer, the series diverges sharply from its Israeli model, and with good reason: returning soldiers don’t have the same hold on the national mindset in America. So while Homeland takes as its premise a U.S. Marine returning home after being held captive by Al-Qaida since 2003, it adds an element of suspense to the mix with Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a CIA operations officer who suspects he may have been turned.

While Hatufim and B’Tipul didn’t offer culturally neutral source material (far from it), they gave Hollywood something even more valuable: fresh ideas. The shows are unlike anything on American television, not only in theme, but in genre. For viewers used to network cop shows or cable series focused on tormented male anti-heroes, a show set entirely in a therapist’s office is nothing if not different. And Israeli television is a fertile ground for dramas that don’t conform to American models. “Israel is not wedded to the usual procedural formats—lawyer, cop, etc.,” says Shaif.

Not so with comedy. Israelis grew up on a steady diet of imported American sitcoms—the first Israeli sitcom, Krovim, Krovim, only premiered in 1983. Today many of Israel’s comedies mimic the classic sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s. The familiar tropes are there—the plots are driven by misunderstandings; men are constantly screwing up and spend an episode working to hide it from their wives who will inevitably find out; children are a bit too precocious.

With contemporary popular American comedies trending toward meta-references and fast-paced jokes, it is not much of a surprise that American audiences would shy away from shows imitating Israeli shows that imitate American shows from 20 years ago. Take last year’s Traffic Light. The Fox show was based on Ramzor, a hit show in Israel. Now in its fourth season, the Israeli show follows three men at different stages in life: Itzko is married with a kid, Amir lives with his girlfriend, and Hefer is the perennial bachelor of the bunch. The show won an Israeli TV Academy Award for best comedy and became the first Israeli TV series to win an International Emmy Award for best comedy series.

Fox heavily promoted the show, which premiered in February 2011, but with dismal ratings it only lasted through May. Looking at the source material, one could guess why the show failed. In one episode, Itzko’s wife gives him two bags—one filled with old clothes to donate to African refuges and one with a Prada dress she needs dry cleaned. If you have ever watched an episode of Home Improvement you can easily guess that he gives away the wrong bag, his wife finds out, and hijinks ensue as he is forced to go down to the refugee shelter to get it back.

This doesn’t mean that all Israeli dramas are good, and Israeli comedies bad. Arab Labor, for example, the first Israeli sitcom to center around an Arab-Israeli family is both radical in its subject matter and riotously funny. But it may be a sign that the American audience is on the hunt for television that seems non-prepackaged, something that Israeli dramas are able to offer. And once Israeli sitcoms find their own voice, they may succeed here as well. And if anyone from Keshet is out there, I’m pretty sure a comedy centered on a multigenerational family that runs a Sabich stand in Tel Aviv is pure gold—remember to thank me at the Emmys.

The post Is That a Falafel in My Situation Comedy? appeared first on Jewcy.