L ifestyle /C ulture
Netflix’s ‘The Club’ is Good, Not Great
T E L EVISION
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
I HAVE TWO categories into
which I put quality shows.

Shows I can’t wait to watch
and shows that, as I’m watching
them, I think to myself, “OK,
yeah, this is good.”
Netflix’s “The Club,” about
Jews in Turkey in the 1950s,
falls into the second category.

Part One of the opening
season, which came out Nov.

5, has interesting characters,
a vibrant setting and richly-
crafted scenes. It’s also a
revealing history lesson on
Turkish Jewry in an increas-
ingly Muslim country.

I enjoyed the six-episode
watch. I was rooting for the
good characters, Matilda
(Gökçe Bahadır) the Jewish
ex-convict, her daughter Rasel
(Asude Kalebek), Selim Songur
(Salih Bademci) the tortured
nightclub performer and
Orhan (Metin Akdülger) the
Greek nightclub owner posing
as Muslim, to succeed.

I found the show’s moral
lesson — that people deserve
second chances — to be
valuable. Matilda, the main
character, is fresh off a prison
sentence for shooting and
killing a guy. But I just wanted
her to reconcile with her
daughter, Rasel. I never saw
her as a murderer.

Despite all of those good
qualities, though, something
was missing. “The Club”
lacked that spark that makes
you think about it when you’re
not watching, that makes you
bring it up in conversation,
that makes you want to hang
out with the characters.

It’s worth the watch, but
only if you’re looking for
something to watch.

Let’s start with why it’s
worth it, though.

Matilda is a strong and
capable woman who can get
her way even in the lowest of
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM positions, like the nightclub job
she’s forced into after getting
out of jail. Rasel is a wild and
careless late teen who suddenly
gets a mother, Matilda, just
as she starts growing into
adulthood. Selim is a charismatic
but struggling singer and
performer who successfully
pitches the nightclub on his
vision for a cabaret show. And
Orhan is an entrepreneur
with a string of failures on his
record who sees the light in
Selim’s vision.

All of these people converge
at the show’s namesake,
“The Club,” in downtown
Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city
and cultural heartbeat. The
downtown setting is shown to
be a lively and colorful strip.

Overhead shots of the club’s
street, marked by glitzy business
signs, enhance this image.

Within this resplendent and
energetic tapestry, though, is a
group of people who become
more and more important to
each other throughout the story.

Matilda, in a nerve-
wracking and then inspiring
scene, decides to be Rasel’s
mother instead of moving to
Israel. Rasel, in a heartbreaking
and then uplifting sequence,
decides to let Matilda in after
17 years away.

Selim, in a bright flash of
charisma, sells the bottom-line
businessman, Orhan, on his
vision for the show. Then later,
after Selim bails on his opening
performance, it’s Orhan who
visits his apartment to convince
him to come back.

Not all of the scenes are
this important to the story.

But most of them make it very
clear that, by the end, they have
advanced it.

In a less capable production,
the scenes run together in the
viewer’s mind. That is not the
case in “The Club.”
Finally, through this enter-
taining and interesting story,
we learn the Jewish history
“The Club” on Netflix
Screenshot From left: Gökçe Bahadır as Matilda and Asude Kalebek as Rasel in a scene from “The Club”
Screenshot of a country that is often
overlooked as a home for Jewry.

And, perhaps not surprisingly,
the outline of that history
is familiar.

As Matilda’s rabbi says early
in the season, “We’ve been
here for hundreds of years.”
But as both Matilda’s and
Orhan’s backstories explain, in
the 1950s, Turkey was starting
to become the 99% Muslim
country that it is today.

Matilda’s father and brother
end up in jail for allegedly not
paying a discriminatory wealth
tax against non-Muslims. Plus,
JEWISH EXPONENT
at different points in the story,
Matilda and Rasel consider
moving to Israel, which tens
of thousands of Turkish Jews
did around at that time. On
top of that, as Selim’s show
and the club become more
successful, Turkish officials
start pressuring Orhan to purge
the non-Muslim members of
his staff.

Today, only about 15,000
Jews remain in Turkey. “The
Club” portrays the trends that
led to that present-day statistic.

For all those reasons, “The
Club” hooked me, kept me for
six episodes and convinced me
to at least keep my eye out
for Part Two, which comes out
in January.

But its plot-driven nature
made me more interested in
learning what happened than
in living in it. And if I watch
Part Two, that will be my
reason for doing so.

I want to know what
happens in “The Club.” But I
don’t really want to go to the
club. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
DECEMBER 16, 2021
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