Unknowns opens with a young girl staggering through a forest. Her face is bloody, her clothes dirty and torn. She finds her boot in a creek and tips muddy water out of it. When we cut to a young man with a wispy moustache and a hand covered in blood, it’s easy to jump to conclusions. Which is just what this Israeli crime series wants you to do – so it can turn those conclusions on their head.
Written (with Guy Sidis and Kirit Yaron) and directed by Tawfik Abu-Wael, Unknowns follows on from his gritty work with Our Boys (available now ) in examining the tensions that underlie Israeli society. Only here the focus is on the teenagers that society has cast aside, and their story is a twisty crime whodunnit where the audience’s assumptions are constantly called into question.
The young man with the bloody hand is Osher (Amir Tessler), and despite his volatile nature – the second he arrives at school he gets into a fight after demanding a cigarette from a classmate – he seems at least somewhat committed to getting his life on track. He’s at a school for at-risk teens in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, and while some of his fellow students seem happy just the way they are, others are looking for a way out.
Osher (Amir Tessler) and Menachem (Ofek Pesach), two of several teen suspects. Source: SBS
Sidis worked for over a decade with at-risk kids before coming up with the concept for this series, and the blunt realism of the setting is the kind of thing Abu-Wael does best. The grinding nature of the desperate, petty world the kids are stuck in is firmly established, in part through the eyes of new volunteer Yaniv (Yehuda Levi) from Tel Aviv.
If he doesn’t exactly seem to be the caring, socially aware type, that’s because he’s been sent there by the courts after his business committed a major fraud. He’s the one asking why everything has to be so slow and difficult; the more he learns the more he wants to help, which may only make things worse.
Naomi (Shani Cohen) and Yaniv (Yehuda Levi). Source: SBS
As for the students, Ethiopian Wasa (Yaniv Almench) has his sights set on fame, having won an audition that could lead to an appearance on talent show Israeli Idol. He has a big-time mentor to help him out too, plus a solid backup plan in place, having already been accepted into a military band. At the other end of the scale is Menachem (Ofek Pesach), the school’s knife-wielding crime boss and local drug dealer. He’s the kind of hair-trigger thug who doesn’t care who he drags down with him.
While Osher’s past is colourful and his current situation at home precarious, for him the school offers a way to escape the path society has set for him. If he can clean up his record, he can join the military, and from there start a new life. Problem is, Menachem is his best friend, and he’s someone with very different goals in life – goals that require a number of willing (and sometimes, not so willing) accomplices.
Wasa (Yaniv Almench). Source: SBS
The rape investigation brings into this closed world detective Avner (comedian Yaniv Biton in his first dramatic role – not that you’d know it from his spot-on world-weary performance). He knows when word gets out about the attack the public are going to be outraged, which means his job is to find a suspect, and quickly. With the school close by he doesn’t have to look far, though when his partner points out that the park has been a notorious hang-out spot for teenagers to drink and smoke for generations, it’s a sign the suspect pool might be larger than first thought.
Focusing his attentions on the school causes tensions at home as well. His wife Naomi (Shani Cohen) is a teacher at the school and a big supporter of Wasa, who rapidly becomes Avner’s prime suspect. She’s convinced of his innocence, and with the school secretly outfitted with security cameras, she might even be able to prove it – if Menachem doesn’t trash them first to hide his own secrets.
Over the nine episodes the characters constantly reveal new angles as the story shifts focus. Abu-Wael has put together a series that doesn’t flinch from the realities of these boys’ hard lives and the difficulties they face in escaping their fate, wrapped in a mystery that keeps the surprises coming. Even the worst characters have a human side to them, while the best make mistakes that could bring everything tumbling down.
Detective Avner (Yaniv Biton). Source: SBS
The future is precarious for Osher (Amir Tessler). Source: SBS
Oh, and Osher’s bloody hand at the start of the first episode? In the next scene he tells Naomi he got it from bashing his mother’s new boyfriend. It seems too blunt to be a lie, but in the world of Unknowns easy answers are what get people killed.
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