If you’ve managed to get through the 30 episodes of The Writer on Netflix, you might be interested in Tango, a compelling whodunit also produced by Eagle Films of Lebanon. The TV series currently streaming on Netflix stars the same two actors as The Writer, Bassel Khayyat and the stunning Daniella Rahme, and with the same director, Rami Hanna.
Tango comprises 31, 40-minute or so episodes, however, so it’s not exactly conducive to binge-watching in the traditional sense, even though individual episode flies by quickly.
Tango is in Arabic, with English subtitles.
One of the cool aspects of a Netflix subscription is that subscribers can gain access to overseas content that is often a lot more entertaining than over-hyped domestic TV shows or movies that benefit from a PR or social media push. It’s also refreshing to watch a film or series that agenda-driven, often compromised professional critics haven’t superficially compartmentalized.
Some Spoilers Follow
Set in a very upscale, secular area of Beirut, Amer (Khayyat) is a rich property developer who is secretly having an extra-marital affair with tango instructor Farah (Rahme) who meet accidentally at a shopping mall. Both are immediately smitten.
Early in the first episode, Amer and Farah get into a devastating rollover accident in an SUV, and one of them lapses into a coma while the other is murdered at or near the scene.
Tango toggles back and forth between a pre-accident and a post-accident time line. Police detective Jad (actorTalai Jarday), who has marital woes of his own, is the lead investigator.
Amer is married to Lina (portrayed by the equally stunning Dana Mardini), who becomes the majority but generally absentee owner of the tango school and who has issues with substance abuse.
Farah is married to the can’t-win-for-losing architect Sami (Bassem Moughnieh), who works for Amer’s company.
The two couples become best friends as well as business associates, which makes for some intense subtext when they socialize together or confide in each other.
Tango also makes you wonder how people got together before texting became a thing.
Farah rebuffs Amer initially before entering into a passionate affair. This kind of rejection-acceptance dance, as it were, has played out in thousands of movies and TV shows in America and apparently around the world. As an aside, you have to ponder how this aspect of pop culture has affected, if not complicated, real-world interactions between men and women.
Unlike the avuncular novelist in The Writer, Khayyat’s Amer is almost humorless and cold, which makes the viewer wonder about the appeal to the Farah character. Rahme portrays Farah at a much more emotionally extreme level than in her role as glamorous but troubled lawyer in The Writer.
And Amer’s even darker side becomes revealed about halfway through the opus.
For the entire cast, it is an impressive and demanding accomplishment to manage to remember all the lines of dialogue (presumably in a short period of time) in the script written by Iyad Abou Al Shamat. The same is certainly true of the dialogue-heavy The Writer, which was authored by Rim Hanna.
In any foreign language movie or TV show, things can be lost in translation as the subtitles unfold. The Tango dialogue, though, certainly contains some perceptive observations about the human condition that may hit home with the viewer, not the least of which is the disaster that can accompany giving in to temptation
Tango seems to have somewhat more enhanced production values than The Writer. While it has lots of soap opera elements, it moves forward (and backward) more as a thriller with a cliffhanger at the end of each episode to keep you hooked. Albeit with 31 episodes, it seems to offer a tighter narrative and editing.
The title sequence and/or the stirring theme music are dazzling and may be enough in an of themselves to capture your imagination.
With its length, though, again it will take some perseverance to reach the end of Tango, while trying to keep the back story and front story straight.
Tango Has Some Odd Moves
Tango is recommended, albeit with a disclaimer based on America’s limited attention span. Here are a couple of additional observations.
There are several sequences of disturbing domestic violence in Tango, with no consequences for the perpetrator, which is equally disturbing.
This apparently was a misreading of the subtitles, but there seemed to be some dialogue about a third man, in addition to her husband and her lover, in the paternity dispute over Farah’s son.
There was no follow-up, however, so this must have been a misinterpretation on the viewer’s end. In fact, the whole paternity subplot, while evidently settled, seems to have been dropped without a Maury-style reveal.
It would nonetheless have been a very cool twist if someone else fathered the child.
Farah’s students seem unusually tolerant of a teacher wholly distracted by personal problems. If you’ve taken any lessons in dance or music, martial arts, working out with a personal trainer, etc., when the teacher is not present, physically or mentally, you know how annoying that can be.
The recurring flashbacks may not be every viewer’s cup of tea.
Beirut PD
Beirut’s judicial police, at least in the fictional presentation, follow some unusual procedures:
In both TV series, plainclothes officers show up at someone’s home or office but hardly ever produce a badge or ID to prove they’re actually cops.
In Tango, the cops conduct all the interrogations in the spacious office of the sage police colonel (played by actor Aleco Daoud) rather than in an interrogation room. Suspects are hardly ever cuffed, and witnesses are brought in to the same room without any concern for their confidentiality or personal safety/privacy.
Jad develops a personal relationship with someone who is a material witness to a crime, yet with no career recriminations.
Cops are slow to realize that when you want to take somebody into custody, you have to set up a perimeter around their entire house, not just the front door. Maybe they don’t watch Live PD.
The Final Episode
In a way, the show is so engrossing you may not want it to come to an end even while expecting closure. Episode 31 of Tango is a letdown, though. The reveal of the killer comes across as perfunctory and a less than an exciting epiphany. Several subplots are left unresolved, although that’s a lot like real life. The last, horror-movie-like scene, is clever, but kind of expected.
Tango would hardly be the first TV series with an underwhelming finale.
Tango currently has no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and just three user reviews on IMDB. Check back for updates.
[Image credit: Eagle Films Production Facebook page]