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As always, I'm happy to annotate/translate if anyone wants; just ask.
I watched the first two seasons (only seasons? IMDB is not helpful, since it seems to say there's only a season 3, with only episode 3 in it), and really liked it.
(Do I have to cut for possible spoilers for a foreign language show from 2008-2009? I'm going to say no, but this is your chance to scroll on by if you're avoiding them.)
I'd heard about Srugim years ago, so was pleased that Hulu finally had it available. I watched the first episode before Shabbat, and it felt timely, partly because of a woman wearing tefillin (there's been a lot of buzz recently about high school girls at religious schools now being allowed to wear them (in the States; I can't imagine this in Israel for Dati Leumi schools (yet?)), plus there was a nice potluck dinner not unlike the one I went to a couple of hours later.
I've watched the other 29 episodes since Shabbat ended, and still like it a lot, though I realized that I can't really imagine a not-Jewishly-knowledgeable person watching it, because there's so much that is just assumed, whether it's the Shabbat siren in Yerushalayim, or why hair covering is an issue, or the context that songs or prayers happen in: it's one thing for the subtitles to translate a prayer, while it's another to know that it's mourner's kaddish, or part of sheva brachot, or a song sung around engaged/just married people. However, it's knowledge I have, and I realized partway through that it's some of why I really liked the show: it has defaults I'm familiar with. There's no Xmas special, possibly with a nod to Hanuka, but there are lots of Shabbatot, a wedding, shiva calls.
It also made me miss Yerushalayim; nowhere else looks quite the same. The rest of Israel too, but I lived in the city, years (ok, decades) ago, so it feels more mine than anywhere else in the country, even if it has sprouted whole neighborhoods since I was a resident. And hearing all that Hebrew helped jump start my spoken language, even though I was definitely using the subtitles (not only do Israelis speak quickly, but there's also lots of vocabulary I don't know).
The show focuses on a small hevre of single friends living in Katamon ("the swamp" for single people, apparently), all of them ostensibly looking for a marriage partner. Over the course of two seasons, people fall in love, people fall out of love, one couple marries, one person stays solidly in the closet, and one person becomes non-religious. It took me a while to notice, but there's very little sex, which is refreshing; there are plenty of other issues to have in the course of a drama, but most USian shows default more to that than anything else.
I watched the first two seasons (only seasons? IMDB is not helpful, since it seems to say there's only a season 3, with only episode 3 in it), and really liked it.
(Do I have to cut for possible spoilers for a foreign language show from 2008-2009? I'm going to say no, but this is your chance to scroll on by if you're avoiding them.)
I'd heard about Srugim years ago, so was pleased that Hulu finally had it available. I watched the first episode before Shabbat, and it felt timely, partly because of a woman wearing tefillin (there's been a lot of buzz recently about high school girls at religious schools now being allowed to wear them (in the States; I can't imagine this in Israel for Dati Leumi schools (yet?)), plus there was a nice potluck dinner not unlike the one I went to a couple of hours later.
I've watched the other 29 episodes since Shabbat ended, and still like it a lot, though I realized that I can't really imagine a not-Jewishly-knowledgeable person watching it, because there's so much that is just assumed, whether it's the Shabbat siren in Yerushalayim, or why hair covering is an issue, or the context that songs or prayers happen in: it's one thing for the subtitles to translate a prayer, while it's another to know that it's mourner's kaddish, or part of sheva brachot, or a song sung around engaged/just married people. However, it's knowledge I have, and I realized partway through that it's some of why I really liked the show: it has defaults I'm familiar with. There's no Xmas special, possibly with a nod to Hanuka, but there are lots of Shabbatot, a wedding, shiva calls.
It also made me miss Yerushalayim; nowhere else looks quite the same. The rest of Israel too, but I lived in the city, years (ok, decades) ago, so it feels more mine than anywhere else in the country, even if it has sprouted whole neighborhoods since I was a resident. And hearing all that Hebrew helped jump start my spoken language, even though I was definitely using the subtitles (not only do Israelis speak quickly, but there's also lots of vocabulary I don't know).
The show focuses on a small hevre of single friends living in Katamon ("the swamp" for single people, apparently), all of them ostensibly looking for a marriage partner. Over the course of two seasons, people fall in love, people fall out of love, one couple marries, one person stays solidly in the closet, and one person becomes non-religious. It took me a while to notice, but there's very little sex, which is refreshing; there are plenty of other issues to have in the course of a drama, but most USian shows default more to that than anything else.