I cannot think of a more stressful viewing experience than Tehran (Apple TV+), a thriller so hectic it makes Homeland look like one of those ambient noise apps that send you off to sleep. The first season saw Tamar (Niv Sultan), an Israeli Mossad hacker/agent with an Iranian family background, going undercover in Tehran in order to facilitate airstrikes on a nuclear power plant. There was a lot of double-crossing, a lot of shooting, and an awful lot of stress. It ended in fairly disastrous fashion, leaving plenty of options open for what could happen next. All-out war? More subterfuge? Either way, it was unlikely to be relaxing.
We join Tamar and her Iranian collaborator Milad (Shervin Alenabi) hiding out in Tehran, two months after the first season’s finale and after all the betrayals it unleashed upon the key players on each side. The old mission is in limbo and must be wrapped up, and Tamar, who has been left adrift, must figure out how to extract herself. But this is not a repeat of season one, and a new mission is to be established. I briefly hoped that, for those of us of a nervous disposition, the new mission might involve manoeuvring Mossad and the Revolutionary Guard towards a cup of tea and a nice lie down. Instead, it involves prisons, hospitals, break-ins and break-outs, secret services, people-smuggling, newly appointed government officials, family members in various states of compromise and, in what looks like a display of Apple TV+’s confidence in the international appeal of the series, a brand new star in the form of Glenn Close.
Appearing as British woman Marjan Montazeri towards the end of the first episode, and speaking a mixture of Farsi and English, Close exudes power and malevolence. As she stepped out of the shadows, she reminded me a little of Ozark’s Cartel lawyer Helen Pierce, crossed with the wicked stepmother in a fairytale. She is authoritative and suspicious, and, as this is Tehran, it is impossible to know whether she should be trusted or not. Unfortunately, Tamar, trapped in Iran, still hunted by Faraz and still of enormous use to the Mossad, does not appear to have much choice in the matter.
All the standard hacker/thriller tropes are present, and used with effect. No episode is boring – everything is taken right up to the wire. There are uploads and downloads, unravelling at an excruciating pace, and chugging towards 100% on the progress bar, as impending danger threatens to kick down the door. There are long chase scenes every five minutes or so. There is a lot of running around in marketplaces and hiding in dark corners, as atmospheric music pounds ominously. And it seems more grim this time around. The bodycount was never particularly restrained, but there are multiple hangings, shootings, and ridiculously large machine guns.
But, in among the relentless action, we occasionally see beyond the espionage into a certain side of life in Tehran. There are drug deals at the gym. The wealthy son of a familiar and crucial commander drives expensive sports cars around the city and is soon to be entangled in business that is highly beneficial to the Mossad’s interests. The aftershocks of the first season continue to have an effect on Tamar, and it feels important to see that she has been traumatised by the horrors she has both witnessed and played a key role in facilitating. Will she be able to maintain the cool, rational judgment she needs to continue to play the long game?
Tehran is one of a raft of better dramas that suggest Apple is getting its act together as a streaming service worth paying attention to, after a long period of treading water. Its policy of releasing a couple of episodes then drip-feeding the rest week-by-week works particularly well for thrillers and stories that thrive on twists and turns; I am now waiting for whatever insanity Shining Girls is ready to unleash upon us every Friday. Tehran is a perfect fit for this approach. Two episodes at once is plenty. Bingeing a whole series in one go would be masochistic.
Whether the prospect of watching a drama about the distinct possibility of a catastrophic war fought in the shadows and involving nuclear capabilities will float your boat may be up for debate, but perhaps it will be like the early days of the pandemic, when everyone decided that the film they would most like to watch was Contagion. I still have a sneaking suspicion that Tehran thinks of itself as slightly more highbrow than it is, but it is a solid thriller, often breathlessly exciting, and has cracked the code of relentless tension.
