“Tehran”: “24” meets “The Americans” in Iran

This review includes spoilers for Season 1 of “Tehran.”

Two decades ago, the Fox series “24” established a template for a new kind of action show: operating at a pitch of constant crisis; packaging street-level detective work, dire terrorist threats and high-level government conspiracies; and indulging a pervading cynicism about practically every person and institution onscreen, except for the tortured hero and a few dependable colleagues.

“24” also had brilliant, if macabre, timing, premiering two months after the Sept. 11 attacks and prospering in the unsettled years that followed. In its wake came many shows that tried for a similar effect (without the real-time, single-day structure that gave it much of its urgency). Some, like “Homeland,” developed by “24” veterans, were superior dramas. But nothing achieved quite the same level of protracted yet controlled chaos, like a Saturday-matinee serial with better writing and production values.

Until now. “Tehran,” an Israeli thriller whose second season began Friday on Apple TV+, is catnip for the cliffhanger-deprived. Its hero, Mossad agent Tamar Rabinyan (Niv Sultan), is in perpetual peril, a condition compounded by the show’s melding of “24”-style plot mechanics with a conceit taken straight from “The Americans”: She’s alone and undercover in the capital of her country’s most deadly enemy, Iran.

Tamar’s specialty is hacking, and in Season 1 (which won an International Emmy for best drama) her mission was to compromise Iran’s air defenses so that Israel could bomb an Iranian nuclear plant. Complications ensued — a handsy electrical-station employee, an ad hoc alliance with a group of anti-government activists (one of whom she fell for) and a relentless pursuit by a skilled investigator with the Revolutionary Guard, Faraz Kamali (Shaun Toub).

The Iranian Faraz’s cat-and-mouse game with the Israeli Tamar is the backbone of the story. But unlike “24,” in which American agent Jack Bauer is the unquestioned hero, or “The Americans,” in which our emotions are clearly directed to the Soviet moles, “Tehran” doesn’t have precisely defined rooting interests. The resourceful, constantly improvising Tamar is the protagonist, but the most sympathetic character is Faraz, a devoted husband to his sick wife and a loyal, dogged agent illused by a government and an intelligence apparatus portrayed as rigid and corrupt.

It’s hard to say how much of Faraz’s appeal is in the writing and how much is thanks to the quiet, unassuming work of Toub (who played an Iranian spy in “Homeland”). He gives Faraz layers of pride, anger, exasperation and compassion as he tracks Tamar while being bullied by his superiors and leaned on by his wife, Naahid (Shila Ommi), whose troubles become a focal point in Season 2.

Sultan doesn’t have Toub’s resources as an actor, but she is quite appealing as Tamar.