Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Graveyard’ Season 2 on Netflix, Where A Turkish Police Inspector Continues Her Fight For The Female Victims Of Violence 

Graveyard (Turkish title: Mezarlik) returns to Netflix for Season 2 with a slight tweak of its format, moving from four extra-large episodes to four two-parters. With their focus on cases of femicide and unsolved acts of violence against women, Chief Inspector Ӧnem Ӧzükü (Birce Akalay) and her Special Crimes team continue to give voice to the voiceless, and in the process encounter lots of pushback. Sometimes it’s societal – honor killings and other cultural and religious practices, and people who are unwilling to change – and sometimes the pushback is work-related, as when Ӧnem must deal with the patriarchy, often as it relates to men in power in Turkish law enforcement.

GRAVEYARD – SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: String musicians, sushi plates, and so many rich folks: the outdoor party at the mansion of a powerful Istanbul family is the last place Inspector Ó¦nem wants to be. She has real police work to do, and parties like this are just for schmoozing. 

The Gist: While Ӧnem’s people continue to work existing cases back at the “Graveyard” – their in-house nickname for the Istanbul PD’s cold case department – a shocking new case emerges at the very party the inspector is attending. Ӧnem and her medical examiner colleague Feriha Mahmudzade (Sezgin Uzunbekiroğlu) leap into action when it’s discovered that a young woman hung herself on the premises. Sadly, they can’t save Yasemin (Sila Mina Bulut). But it shows the lengths they’ll go to – and where Graveyard itself will go – that Ӧnem will assist Feriha in an improvised, triage-style caesarean section right there at the party. Yasemin was pregnant when she died. And the father’s identity is immediately one of the biggest questions at the heart of Ӧnem’s newest case.

But there are questions inside the Graveyard team, too. While Ӧnem works effectively with Serdar Ata (Olgun Toker) one-on-one – they do a pretty solid good cop/bad cop routine during witness questioning – Serdar likes to think he’s in charge when she’s in the field. He also reserves heaps of grief for research tech Selin (Hande Dumlu) – Serdar resents that Selin replaced Sofia (Berna Ӧztürk) – and though detective Hasan Duru (Șehsuvar Aktaș) tries to stay committed to the team’s investigation of his daughter’s murder, he’s also attempting to process his own grief. She is a brilliant investigator. But with her own people, Ӧnem Ӧzükü also has to be an administrator.

As the Graveyard team begins to look into Yasemin’s death, they discover writings and poems on her laptop where the young woman imagined herself as a self-styled wandering knight in the tradition of Don Quixote. They discover Yasemin’s fraught engagement to a possibly unstable man related to her parents’ employer. And with every step, the Special Crimes team also uncovers seemingly more links to men with histories of using power and wealth to avoid accountability. In other words, the chief inspector has found more fuel for the central cause of her work: finding the voice of the real victims in a crime, and especially when those victims are women.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Graveyard star Birce Akalay is a Netflix double-threat – Akalay also stars in all three seasons of the Turkish drama As The Crow Flies (Kuș Uçușu). And fans of the CBS-style police procedural – the CSI universe; also the canceled-but-still-relevant Cold Case and Without a Trace – will recognize large chunks of the action on Graveyard, especially as Inspector Ó¦nem liaises with the different personalities on her team. 

Our Take: In the lead episode of Graveyard Season 2, when Ӧnem Ӧzükü’s teenage daughter complains that her mom sees everyone – and especially males – with suspicion, Ӧnem doesn’t necessarily disagree. While she reassures her daughter that the student with whom she’s producing a podcast about honor killings is “one of the good ones,” Ӧnem’s work has also shown her plenty of the bad ones. 

On one level, Graveyard functions quite well as a typical police procedural, with the team gathering to collaborate on an investigation even as they navigate their internal issues. But the series works even more effectively as a commentary on endemic issues of culture and society. Even as a proven leader, Inspector Ӧnem still isn’t consistently seen as much by the male establishment. (Birce Akalay is great at navigating these moments as Ӧnem, representing in her features a mix of frustration and straightforward professionalism.) And even though the Graveyard team has achieved justice for so many forgotten female victims, it’s telling that at their headquarters, they remain surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of cold case files. Inside each one is the story of a woman wronged. 

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode besides bodies in the morgue.

Parting Shot: Episodes of Graveyard season 2 are in two parts, so the first installment of “Silent Devil” ends on a kind of cliffhanger, with yet another significant development in the Special Crimes’ team’s latest case.

Sleeper Star: On Graveyard, the character of forensic specialist Berk Güleryüz adds the eccentricity piece to the investigative team. But Baran Güler doesn’t overplay him, finding solid middle ground between representing Berk’s personality and offering a bit of comic relief.  

Most Pilot-y Line: “If you want to lead Special Crimes, this is part of your job, too” – no matter how capable Chief Inspector Ӧnem is at her job – and she is very, very capable – it seems like there is always a man in the police command hierarchy ready to criticize her.

Our Call: Stream It. Birce Akalay continues her fine work as Inspector Ӧnem in season 2 of Graveyard. She is forceful and inspirational – and let’s face it, she always looks very cool – even while remaining stalwart in leading cold case investigations of crimes against women in Turkish society.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.

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