Since “Shtisel”left Netflix in March, our lives haven’t been the same. The drama about the Haredi family from Jerusalem is one so many of us have loved to revisit from time to time since the Israeli show’s meteoric success on Netflix in late 2018.
With no streaming platform hosting it, for the past few months, we haven’t been able to look at Michael Aloni’s wistful eyes as tortured artist Kiveh. We haven’t been able to cackle and shake our heads at the antics of family patriarch Shulem and his brother Nuchem (Sasson Gabai) and to admire the power of the show’s powerful, complex women, like Gitti, played by Netta Riskin, and her daughter Ruchami played by Shira Haas. We haven’t been able to rewatch one of themost nuanced portrayals of ultra-Orthodox Jews on TV, and one of the most entrancing Israeli shows ever made.
But now, we can all see them again — or even for some, have the pleasure of watching them for the first time — since the show has finally found a new home on the Jewish streaming platformChaiFlicks, and will be available to watch everywhere (except in the UK and Canada, sorry folks).
The first season of the show is already available to stream, with its 12 episodes having premiered on the platform on December 14. The second season is coming to ChaiFlicks in April of 2024, and season three will premiere sometime in August of 2024. While you’re waiting, there’s plenty of incredible Jewish and Israeli content you can peruse on ChiaFlicks — addictive Israeli shows like “Mekimi,”“释放”、“新黑色”,“Checkout,”“Asylum City,” “Normal” andthe extremely pertinent show “The Lesson,”as well as many incredible Israeli films.
While “Shtisel” left Netflix this past March, it still had quite impressive streaming numbers between January and March — season one was viewed for 37.6 million hours, season two for 28.4 million and season three for 27.8 million, according to a reportreleased by Netflix earlier this month. Yes Studios’ “Fauda,” which you can still stream on Netflix, and whose fourth season premiered there this year, was viewed for 71 million hours between January and June, and ranks among Netflix’s top 200 most viewed titles.
For those of you who are still dreaming of new “Shtisel” content, a spinoff is coming to Israeli viewers sometime soon.“Kugel,”which tells the story of Nuchem and Libby, and their lives as Haredi Jews in Belgium’s Antwerp (the site of another excellent Jewish Netflix show,“Rough Diamonds,”) was slated to premiere in Israel sometime in 2023.
Unfortunately, the current war seems to have delayed the show’s premiere. But it’s still something to look forward to sometime in the future. And let’s face it, we all need more positive things to look forward to.
