KAN 11’s new dark comedy mixes comedy with heartfelt moments as a speech therapist faces family and personal turmoil.
Happy Place, a dark comedy, which perhaps should be called a dramedy, which is airing on Sundays and Wednesdays on KAN 11 (and which can be seen on kan.org.il), sounds bleak, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. But it’s about real people with real problems, as well as about the solutions that many people actually turn to, and it’s both funny and moving.
The main character is Vered (Noa Koler), a speech therapist who is in the midst of a midlife crisis, without even realizing it.
She’s not particularly happy with her husband, Ben (Avihai Pinhasov), or their kids. She’s close to her mother, Naomi (Tiki Dayan), a woman who suffers from diabetes and is depressed about it.
Vered is surprised when an old friend of her mother, Devora (95-year-old Lea Koenig, who is absolutely wonderful), a Holocaust survivor who was in the partisans during World War II and who had an unusual specialty while hiding in the woods, gets in touch with her.
Devora says that Naomi asked her to euthanize her. Shocked, Vered learns that a doctor is urging her mother to have her leg amputated, and she doesn’t know what to do when her mother tells her she wants to die.
A blood glucose test is done to check sugar levels in a Type 2 Diabetes patient (credit: DARRYL LEJA/NIH/FLICKR)
Impulsively, Vered brings her mother to a seminar run by Yotam (Idan Haviv), an “emotional coach,” the latest boyfriend of her friend Ossi (Moran Stoyitzky).
A mix of humor and deep emotion
The scene in the seminar, where the relentlessly positive coach and the relentlessly negative ailing elderly woman meet, is unexpectedly touching, and all the scenes with Yotam are interesting.
The series makes fun of Yotam and the wellness industry but doesn’t discount it or discredit him, and the series respects the people who are hoping to change their lives.
Yotam influences both Vered and Naomi in unexpected ways, and that’s at the heart of this series.
Noa Koler, who is one of the busiest actresses in Israel – she also stars in Checkout and was in Rehearsals and The Wedding Plan – created the series with director Ram Nehari, and she also wrote the screenplay.
She has done a good job at capturing the way many people live now, and created relatable characters. Koler and Tiki Dayan, one of Israel’s most beloved actresses, are especially good in their scenes together.
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