English Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock once offered an explanation of how he perceived the difference between surprise and suspense in cinema.
Surprise is when two people sit at a table and a bomb goes off underneath them.
Munich Games trailer
Suspense is when we see someone plant the bomb under the table and watch the pair meet for coffee unawares.
German-Israeli drama series Munich Games, which premiered on Tuesday on Israeli cable TV provider HOT, opens with a shot of a bomb being planted in a sports stadium in Munich, Germany; lying in wait for crowds of spectators scheduled to watch a friendly match between an Israeli and a German team at the venue a few days later.
The game is supposed to act as a sign of peace and a tribute to the victims of the 1972 terror attack in which 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were massacered by Palestinian radicals.
But in Munich Games, which takes place 50 years after that horrific terror act, the scheduled game turns into a threat in and of itself.
Oren Simon (Yousef Sweid), a Mossad analyst stationed in Germany, and Maria Köhler (Seyneb Saleh), a German policewoman, join hands to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself.
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Yousef Sweid and Seyneb Saleh as Oren Simon and Maria Köhler in Munich Games
(Photo: HOT, NEXT TV)
Israeli screenwriter Michal Aviram (of acclaimed Netflix action-drama series Fauda fame), worked on Munich Games along with German screenwriter Martin Behnke and incorporated the Palestinian refugee camp in Germany into the show's plot as the usual suspects, as well as Germany's far-right which is also implied to be involved in the attack in the show's first two episodes.
The series strictly adheres to the rules of the action-drama genre and excels at it. It shares a similar vibe with Fauda as well as some of the hallmarks that made the Israeli action-drama an international success.
Munich Games also tries to strike a nerve with the viewers. It is incredibly diverse and runs in four languages (German, Hebrew, Arabic, and English) while treading intercultural tensions, historical guilt and differences in mentality between Israelis, Germans and Palestinians.
Oren Simon, an Arab-speaking Israeli Jewish, is not your typical Mossad agent. He is an analyst who intercepts a message in Arabic on a dark web forum that alarms security and intelligence agencies in both countries.
Maria is a Christian Lebanese-born German who is married to a German husband but has an affair with one of her sources, a Palestinian man named Munir.
Sir Dova'le Glickman (Jackie Igelski), the manager of the Israeli team, is the son of a Holocaust survivor who seeks closure on German soil but is also caught up in a money dispute with local elements.
Although the plot goes beyond the bounds of reason at times, it still manages to competently convey the mounting trauma that undergirds it, an endless loop from which there is no escaping.