The typical Turkish soap opera, or "dizi," does not really resemble the traditional long-running, indeed multigenerational, soap operas of the U.S. and the U.K. such as "General Hospital" or "Coronation Street," which have been on the air since the 1960s. Nonetheless, they are also unlike typical drama series which run for a set number of episodes and complete a full story arc. The typical Turkish dizi is designed to last for at least a year, although if it survives early cancellation and proves a success, a new season is invariably commissioned. But at some point, it does all come to an end, and, while there are exceptions to this, it is unusual that a Turkish dizi passes three years on the air.

The typical dizi is on once a week in the evening. Although technically they are scheduled to start at 8 p.m., a great deal of advertising time eats into this, interspersed with a summary of the previous week’s action. These summaries are not simple two- to three-minute affairs but are detailed to the point they are more akin to abridgements of novels. As for the new episode, that starts at some point after 9 p.m. and interspersed with fairly long commercial breaks, it runs to just beyond midnight. The typical dizi invariably centers on a love story but includes the wider families and acquaintances of the couple, and the viewing experience it offers is less one that requires hawk-like attention to every detail, but is rather a more relaxed affair of television-centered socialization involving gossip and speculation among those watching it in the living room.

As the traditional dizi is the expected form of TV drama in Türkiye, Netflix presumably saw a hole in the market for the type of series that it has commissioned with such success elsewhere. Such series hold out the promise of a different kind of viewing experience by keeping the storylines tight rather than multilayered and focusing on a smaller set of characters, yet also enabling deeper development of both than that allowed by the shorter running time of a feature film. As such, the Netflix approach had the potential of making Turkish dramas that are so gripping that the viewer will feel they cannot wait for the end and will attempt to binge the series in one viewing.

That was the promise of Netflix getting into the Turkish televised drama market. Whether it has fulfilled it depends on the perspective of the viewer, but in my mind, it has so far largely failed. It seems to have brought aspects of the traditional dizi that fit badly into the new format and then pretended that something quite different is being served up through being more sexually explicit. This has resulted in series that have been so bad that I have to praise the newly released Netflix drama in question here, "Not a Stranger," for at least not making me give up on it before the end. That, however, should not imply that it impressed me very much though as my review of it will now make clear.

Basic story of 'Not a Stranger'

Not a Stranger, whose original Turkish title is "Seni Tanıyorum," meaning "I know you,” is a drama directed by Mert Baykal centered around three millennial characters. The first of these is Funda, played by Elçin Sangu, a renowned artist who is finding that the responsibilities of new motherhood are preventing her from devoting herself to her painting. She therefore needs a permanent childminder for her baby Mavi, but her sensitivity to Mavi’s needs causes her to rule out potential candidates. Although the second character, her husband Ilker, played by Ozan Dolunay, is supportive of his wife getting back to her art, he is somewhat exasperated by her stringency in the matter of the childminders.

There is one person who has managed to bond well with their baby, though. That is the third character, Nazlı, played by Melis Sezen, to whom Funda brings Mavi at the swimming baths. Nazlı, though, soon comes to tell Funda that she has quit her job there and will soon reluctantly be leaving the city to work elsewhere. This leads to Funda offering Nazlı the position of childminder in her own home. There is an odd and foreboding scene in which Funda wishes to show the new childminder to Ilker in a video chat, but which Nazlı swiftly absents herself from before she can be seen.

When Ilker later comes home, he greets Nazlı, who is in the kitchen with her back to him. When she turns around, though, and he recognizes her, the vibe is very tense. Funda then comes to formally introduce them, but notices that something is off. Here is a bit of an unusual twist for a drama of this type. For when they are in private, Ilker tells Funda that he had a one-night stand with Nazlı. At this point, alarm bells would be ringing in many a home, but Funda does not consider this reason to dismiss Nazlı. And there is an irony here, because Ilker, who has appeared to be honest, actually has not been. For the viewer is later to learn that his relationship with Nazlı was an intense one of some duration, though it is also the case that Ilker did bring it to an end in order to marry Funda.

So Nazlı stays in the house to look after Mavi, and she and Ilker wind up spending a lot of time together. I think it is not much of a spoiler to reveal that the reason Funda ought to have ejected Nazlı on night one comes to be validated.

Muddled storytelling approach

Indeed, Funda’s choice in keeping Nazlı on in their home is an odd one. It led me to speculate that this drama might turn out to resemble the absolutely brilliant but very chilling short story "Hell Screen” by Ryunosuke Akuatagawa. That centers on an artist, Yoshihide, who witnesses the death of the only person in the world whom he loves, his daughter, in order to produce his masterpiece. I initially wondered whether Funda was deliberately putting her marriage at risk in order to see what it would allow her to create artistically. And the drama did seem to be going in that direction, for shortly after Nazlı’s first arrival in the house, Funda encourages Ilker and Nazlı to spend a day together, which augmented the Akutagawa vibe with that of the 2014 film Effie Gray, which tells the true story of John Ruskin cynically trying to push his wife Effie Gray into the arms of the painter John Everett Millais. Moreover, much later in Not a Stranger, there is a suggestion that Funda had been behaving in something of a Yoshihide-like manner. For Nazlı’s tasks in the house are not limited to looking after Mavi but also involve her modelling for Funda. Then, in the resulting exhibition of Nazlı-featured works, the central piece is a Nazlı with outstretched hands holding a bloody heart that had been severed out of a body. Although this may suggest Funda has cut out her own heart – that is, destroyed her marital relationship – in order to produce her greatest artwork, more careful observation reveals the small hole in Nazlı’s chest, meaning it is hers.

So the reason Funda keeps Nazlı on and sets off all that follows remains ambiguous. It is true that any drama can be suggestive – offering tantalising clues as to what is occurring but never quite giving any real authoritative stamp on any plot developments, or it can be very revealing in detail and thus explain its story explicitly, leaving little room for speculative interpretation. This Netflix series seems an odd mixture of the two. There is uncertainty not only in the main plot driver but also, for instance, in the family relationships of each of the main characters, which are left largely undeveloped.

But then, on the other hand, some points are laboured to the point of excruciation and seemingly for no purpose. The dead figure seen by Funda in her hallucinations is dramatic, at first. But when he appears again and again, it simply becomes drawn-out and irritating. Then there is a scene at the coast in which Funda and Nazlı drink together, which is, once again, made far too long for its dramatic need. All in all, I felt that if about half of the running time of this series was cut, it would entail no real loss and would in fact improve it by keeping the drama tighter.

This labouring of plot points reveals one main area in which this series is problematic and that is that it imports ill-fitting elements from the traditional Turkish dizi. There are other examples of this. For instance, a jarring flaw concerning the characters, which reflects that in certain dizis, concerns their professions. Funda is represented as an artist, one who has an "existential” need to paint. It is true that there are scenes in which she is literally in front of a canvas, but these are somewhat marred by the ridiculously clichéd way she emotionally attacks it with paint, and in one scene, literally punches it. The problem is more though that when she is away from her studio, her artist self seems to be lost, rendering it not intrinsic to her. Nazlı, also, despite being described as "a greatly skilled nurse,” does not seem to really embody her career either. But the worst of all is Ilker. He is supposed to be an architect whose brilliance in his field has made him what he is. And yet, Ilker looks more like a confused and mopey teenager than he ever does a successful creative. Also, the fact that Funda and Ilker are both artists creates neither a deeper bond between them nor, alternatively, a point of frictional jealousy; rather, it seems oddly just irrelevant to their relationship.

Then there is the issue that time is devoted to important plot developments that are then left pointlessly hanging. For instance, there is the question as to whether Funda will discover what Ilker and Nazlı get up to when she is absent. The task of ascertaining this is potentially made easier by the security cameras that have recently been installed all over the house in order to monitor Mavi. Yet, the cameras not only never lead to a discovery, but more strangely, Funda’s suspicions that are initially fed by them then seem neither to grow or decline but simply continue and go nowhere. In a similar vein, Chekhov’s dictum that a gun onstage has to go off, meaning that significant props must lead to plot developments, fails in this series. For on one occasion Nazlı and Ilker become physical in Funda’s art studio whilst she is away on a work trip. As often happens in dramas, this causes a piece of jewellery to fall unnoticed. The next day, Funda having returned, Nazlı enters the studio with some herbal tea for her and spots the earring under a stool. With Funda clearly not having seen it, Nazlı has to retrieve it without drawing attention to the earring. This scene lasts for a tense few minutes. Having successfully retrieved the earring, Nazli places it in a pouch of the bag for Mavi. Funda later unexpectedly takes the bag and even discovers the earring inside. But without the earring in place on the studio floor, it signifies little to Funda, and the whole issue is left there and does not advance the plot at all.

Then there are plot developments that make no real sense. For example, with the backstory of Nazlı we learn that she was treated harshly by her mother and thus understandably developed her closest bond with her grandmother instead. Then later, after Nazlı had become a nurse, we are shown her grandmother in great pain as she is dying of a terminal illness. She wants Nazlı to end her suffering. This resembles, of course, a scene close to the end of the 1997 film, The English Patient, but there the terminally ill figure is not related to the nurse, let alone the mainstay of her childhood. Thus, the grandmother’s request, which is acceded to by Nazlı, is a huge betrayal of the trust that has been built up between them over Nazlı’s lifetime, and it understandably psychologically scars her. However, the nature of the scar gives her an attitude toward drugs that is presented in a very confusing manner.

There is also the case of a poisoning in the series which resembles that of the 2006 Chinese film Curse of the Golden Flower. This causes one of the characters to end up in a psychiatric hospital. Yet, despite their recovery beginning soon after admission for the obvious reason they are no longer being administered the toxin, no one at the hospital discovers the true cause of the character’s mental breakdown. I found this aspect very odd. I have had no experience of psychiatric care in Türkiye, but on any visit to a regular doctor here, a blood sample is always wanted from me, so the idea, however, that someone who has actually had a psychotic break would be hospitalised without bloodwork seems incomprehensible.

Performance of Melis Sezen

All of that being said, I do feel that praise is deserved for Melis Sezen in her portrayal of the emotionally complex Nazlı. She has played a role of a similar kind before in the Turkish dizi "Sadakatsiz" ("A Woman Scorned"), which is the 2020-22 Turkish adaptation of the British drama "Doctor Foster." In the new Netflix series, Sezen has once again been cast in the role of the homewrecker, but both here and before, her character is one that has become such through an imposition on her innocence by men she has trusted. In "Not a Stranger," she has become, in her general relations with Ilker, understandably uncommunicative, but with her fiery-eyed expressions of what seem like contempt, she brilliantly comes to dominate him and prevents him from ordering everything to his own needs and continuing to lead his previously uncomplicated life. There is also an eerily realistic scene in which a creep at a party hits on Nazlı, but rather than repulsing him immediately, she leads him on first in order to humiliate him, allowing her to deftly dominate the situation. Also, of all the characters, it is Nazlı who reveals real truths about the human psyche, most notably its capacity for self-justification that can lead one from the thought that "this life should have been mine” to all that that can then entail.

As a drama, "Not a Stranger" is unsatisfying and comes to betray the potential of its initial episodes. However, if seen in evolutionary terms, I guess there is some promise to this particular Netflix drama after all. For despite its many flaws, it was considerably more watchable than the recent "The Museum of Innocence" ("Masumiyet Müzesi") and that was based on a book by Türkiye’s sole Nobel Prize-winning author who was even involved in the drama itself. Perhaps "Not a Stranger" allows for the hope that, step by step, the Turkish Netflix drama will reach a level of gripping dramatic intensity that will allow it to rival others on the platform. Yet, it itself remains, unfortunately, not really a rival to anything.

Rating: 2 from 5.