One of the first things you might notice, in two new Israeli mini-series about the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, is the ubiquity of screens. As the chaos unfolds, phones buzz and buzz, issuing a flood of texts, emojis and appalling videos shot by terrified civilians. Victims, responders, parents huddled with their children — all of them are simultaneously experiencing the atrocity and witnessing it.
The idea of witnessing, both as modern condition and as moral obligation, runs through “Red Alert,” on Paramount+, and “One Day in October,” on HBO Max. Both series premiered in the United States on the two-year anniversary of the attack. Both are based on the stories of victims and survivors. And both, after two years of war, death and acrimony, ask audiences to refocus their attention on the enormity of a single day.
“Red Alert,” created by Lior Chefetz, is the more conventional in form, working in the familiar mode of terrorism drama. Its visual language is of shaky camera and disorientation; it follows a ticking-time-clock chronology as a peaceful morning devolves into nightmare. Kinetic, somber and emotionally intense, it could be any number of streaming-TV terrorism thrillers, but for the fact that its action heroes are ordinary people.
Over four episodes, it interweaves several of their stories, including those of a family besieged in its home on a kibbutz; a husband-and-wife pair of security officers separated as the invaders massacred attendees at the Nova music festival; a Palestinian immigrant hiding with his baby after seeing his wife killed in front of him; and a middle-aged mother who shuttles wounded in her car while the bullets are still flying. (Sara Vino is a standout in this last role, giving her character a human-scale, stubborn bravery.)
“One Day in October,” created by Oded Davidoff and Daniel Finkelman, was more quickly put together. (Its first four episodes aired last year in Israel, where it is titled “Red Dawn.”) It is also more stylistically adventurous and — perhaps because each episode focuses on a single story — more attentive to the inner lives of its protagonists.
Its seven installments weave together dramatic recreations with surveillance and cellphone videos, even dreamlike animated sequences. In one memorable episode, two young women hide from gunmen in a portable toilet at the music festival; the plastic box becomes an entire world — prison, refuge, projection screen. Each installment shifts genres, from paramedic procedural to survival tale to action drama.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Two Oct. 7 Series Show the Power, and Limits, of Memory appeared first on New York Times.
