PERSONA – TV Review

PERSONA is a subtitled Turkish 12-episode TV miniseries offering a unique protagonist in a suspenseful crime drama. Agah (Haluk Bilginer) is a retired, widowed civil servant who learns he’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He’s been burdened with a whopper of a secret for many years involving serious criminal conduct by a whole village full of men – some of whom wield far more influence than they should. With the sun imminently setting on his lucidity, he decides to go vigilante and avenge the old wrongs by bumping off as many of the evildoers as he can before his competence and personality yield to the disease. The idea is to be the man he’s wished he were before losing the ability to even be the man he is.

For a lifelong desk jockey, Agah shows amazing resourcefulness and skills in starting his mission. But this is no Charles Bronson revenge flick. Agah screws up periodically, and needs a bunch of lucky breaks along the way. His mental status ebbs and flows, consistent with the usual course of this condition, flagging at very inconvenient moments more than once. His freedom to covertly form and execute his extensive plan is further complicated by the arrival of his estranged daughter and her surly teenaged son. The daughter’s whiny, annoying presence quickly reminded me (not in a good way) of an American crime series character – Tony Soprano’s pain-in-the-ass sister.

Agah’s efforts split screen time with focus on our other protagonist – police detective Nevra Elmas (Cansu Dere) who is prominent in the high-profile task of catching what seems to be Turkey’s first serial killer. She has her own problems, not the least of which is the blatant sexism she faces as the only woman in the homicide bureau. Her role in the hunt becomes more crucial as the killer leaves messages addressed to her on his victims. Her relationship to either the killer or the corpses he piles up is as much a mystery to her as to the audience.

Since this unfolds over about 12 hours of running time, the script includes many other characters and issues – past and present – that flesh out the personas of our key players, while gradually revealing layers of the driving forces behind Agah’s plans. The result is a slow, intense complicated drama that rewards the patient and attentive viewer by delivering numerous dimensions of emotional depth and character development enhancing the underlying suspense tale.

Topic is streaming this by releasing the first four episodes, followed by weekly issue of the others. I’d recommend waiting until you can binge about a half-dozen before starting. Those early chapters of setup and intros proceed at a rather glacial pace that could try your patience. The ensuing hours deliver more action, boosted by moments of warmth and humor, than the first four might lead one to expect. The latter are still on the slow side, but no more so than most multi-episode European crime imports. The unique Alzheimer’s premise, along with other shrewd creative decisions by writer Hakan Gunday, keeps this tale from being as predictable as many of its rivals for your attention.

PERSONA, in Turkish with English subtitles, begins streaming on Topic on Dec. 2

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars