It’s been over five years since the Israeli-produced thriller Tehran debuted on Apple TV, and it’s been about three-and-a-half-years since the second season, which featured Glenn Close, bowed on the streamer. Now the show is back with a third season, with Hugh Laurie joining the cast. Will people remember enough about the show to be interested?
TEHRAN SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “NUCLEAR SITE, NANTAZ, IRAN.” Yellow-clad inspectors are escorted down a hallway by soldiers.
The Gist: One of the inspectors is Eric Peterson (Hugh Laurie). When the Iranians who escorted him and the other inspectors in are distracted by a phone call, Peterson tries to install a camera in a fire alarm box. However, he drops the device, and one of his fellow inspectors sees him pick it up. The team then gets word about the death of General Mohammadi (Vassilis Koukalani) and are told to leave. We find out, though, that Peterson has another mission in mind, and vows to a woman that comes to his hotel room that he has to go back to that nuclear plant.
We then see Mossad agent Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan), embedded in Tehran in a failed attempt to hack into the Iranian government’s nuclear operations, watching a car on fire on the roof of a parking garage. She goes to street level and runs, and the agent that’s going after her isn’t reporting into the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC), but to Mossad. But Tamar manages to kill him and escape.
In the meantime, IGRC captain Faraz Kamali (Shaun Toub) deals with the investigation into Mohammadi’s assassination, when an underling comes to him looking for resources to help him investigate the death of therapist Marjan Montazeri (Glenn Close). What the underling doesn’t know is that Faraz is covering up the fact that his wife Nahid (Shila Ommi) killed Marjan.
Tamar manages to find a women’s shelter to hide out, but through a gaming app, she texts a Mossad mole to find out what she can do to stop being their target, especially since an assassin named the Owl has been sent to find her. Leverage is the answer, says the mole; get information from Marjan’s laptop that she can use to keep her alive. When she finally breaks into Marjan’s laptop with a dongle she found in a hidden safe, she finds out about a hidden weapons delivery.
Peterson is determined to find evidence that the Iranians are in breach of the weapons treaty, but his team is barred from even going back to the nuclear facility by Faraz, due to the protests after Mohammadi’s death.
Photo: Apple TV
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? For Season 1, we compared Tehran to other espionage thrillers like from Homeland , 24 and Fauda, the last of which Tehran co-creator Moshe Zonder was also a part of.
Our Take: One of the things that has changed since Tehran‘s first season in 2020 is the addition of big American and British stars. Close joined in Season 2 back in 2022, and with her character’s death, Laurie has now joined the cast. It’s likely an attempt by the producers and Apple to connect the show to a wider audience, given that most of the first season was in Farsi and Hebrew.
We’re not really all that sure what they add to the story, though, given what’s at the core of the series. Tamar has always been conflicted as a Persian Jew, infiltrating her hometown but also dealing with family members on both sides of the Israel-Iran divide. And Faraz is more about making sure he has the political capital to do what he needs to do instead of being automatically loyal to the Ayatollah and the government.
Sure, most of the action we see in any given episode is standard-grade spy stuff: chases, fights, gunfire, etc. The producers do a good job of having Athens stand in for Tehran, so the show is a visual treat. But the shadings of what Tamar and Faraz go through are at the heart of Tehran.
So, unless Peterson, the inspector played by Laurie, crosses paths with Tamar at some point and they join forces in trying to prove that Iran is making nuclear weapons, his story seems like an unnecessarily parallel one. We’ll hold judgement on that because that may ultimately happen. But it may also just be two stories on different tracks that never meet, and that feels like a distraction more than an asset.
Photo: Apple TV
Performance Worth Watching: Niv Sultan is compelling as Tamar, who still seems to be loyal to Israel despite the fact that she’s a burned asset for Mossad and they’re all to willing to eliminate her.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Nahid hears a noise in her house. She searches and then the camera is off her. Farad comes home, and out of a side room is Tamar, holding Nahid at gunpoint.
Sleeper Star: Shaun Toub is familiar to American audiences because of his recurring role on Homeland, among many other credits. He gives Faraz a world-weary air that’s authentic; as we said, he’s more about playing the political game than about any particular ideology.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Peterson is confronted by the co-worker who saw him install the device at the nuclear facility, Peterson describes how frustrating the inspection protocol is: “You don’t try hunting a buck by sending a written warning before you shoot it. It’s humiliating.” That’s a writerly line, folks, not one that would likely be uttered in real life.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While Laurie’s presence Anglicises Tehran a bit, we’re still intrigued by the subtleties of Tamar’s and Faraz’s stories, especially now that their stories have started to come together.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
