The four-part series “Red Alert,” a scripted account of the terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, gains its power from the absence of context. As conceived by writer, director and co-creator Lior Chefetz (“The Stronghold”), the story eschews a bird’s-eye view of Hamas militants’ incursion from the Gaza Strip, the IDF’s counteroffensive or the broader history of a conflict now well into its eighth decade. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is never mentioned; neither is Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar, the attacks’ mastermind. (Even the word “Palestinian” doesn’t appear in the scripts.) Instead, the main characters of “Red Alert” are ordinary people — kibbutzniks, cops and kindergarten teachers blindsided by a horrifying onslaught of violence. We experience the day as they do, almost in real time.
But it’s precisely the context of “Red Alert” that makes the show noteworthy, especially to stateside viewers who can stream the show on Paramount+. Parent company Paramount Skydance announced the series’ acquisition with a statement from newly installed CEO David Ellison, who praised “Red Alert” as “critical” and lauded its “harrowing precision.” (Another high-profile figure in American entertainment, “Pulp Fiction” producer Lawrence Bender, offered “Red Alert” his imprimatur as an executive producer.) It’s highly unusual for an executive at Ellison’s level to weigh in on a title his company didn’t even produce, like if Ted Sarandos urged his subscribers to check out AMC’s “Interview With the Vampire” on Netflix. Yet, 10 days prior, Ellison’s Paramount had made another atypical move, proactively condemning a boycott pledge targeting certain Israeli film institutions — indicating a vested interest in the setting and subject of “Red Alert” on Ellison’s part.
That same boycott indicates the other kind of context that viewers will bring to “Red Alert,” which is timed to the second anniversary of the nightmarish events it depicts. The intervening two years have only brought more pain and bloodshed throughout the region. Some of these open wounds are alluded to in the postscript of “Red Alert,” like the continued captivity of four dozen Israeli hostages in Gaza; some are not, like alleged war crimes and widespread starvation in the Strip on top of a death count now estimated at over 60,000. One could theoretically make a show just as wrenching as “Red Alert” about infants dying from lack of food, doctors forced to treat amputees without anesthetic and kids killed by drone fire while playing foosball. Unlike “Red Alert,” such a show probably couldn’t shoot on location due to the Strip’s near-total leveling, and Ellison’s Paramount almost certainly wouldn’t touch it.
As much as “Red Alert” attempts to cleave away everything but the immediate and subjective, it joins projects like the touring Nova Exhibition and the IDF-produced documentary “Bearing Witness” that offer their versions of a narrative that remains hotly contested — that of the origins, goals and sympathetic parties of a still-ongoing war. Ellison clearly understands the power and significance of elevating certain stories over others. There’s a reason he chose to distribute “Red Alert” and not, say, “No Other Land,” the documentary about settler violence in the West Bank that never found a U.S. backer despite winning an Oscar earlier this year. That film was recently name-checked in an anonymous petition from 30 Paramount employees accusing the company of “silencing Palestinian voices” while “actively and exclusively platform[ing] Israeli perspectives.”
It’s thus the very elements that make “Red Alert” such an affecting watch that also make the show an inherently impossible effort. In the moment, Chefetz, co-creator Ruth Efroni and their collaborators can situate us firmly in the early hours of that terrible day, when holiday preparations for Simchat Torah were overtaken by questions of basic survival. But “Red Alert” arrives in the messy, disputed aftermath of Oct. 7 — a present tense viewers will inevitably return to, however vivid the show’s staging of the recent past.
Each protagonist of “Red Alert” is based on a specific survivor, some invoked by name and some given a pseudonym at their request. Batsheva Yahalomi (Rotem Sela) and her husband Ohad (Miki Leon) belong to the former group. The Yahalomis and their three children initially retreat to the bomb shelter that’s a feature of many Israeli homes, especially those within rocket range of the Strip; it’s there they hear scary-but-typical overhead explosions joined by gunfire, signaling a much more immediate threat. (“Red Alert” takes its name from the automated warning message that plays on an eerie loop throughout.) Such indirect exposition drives home how disorienting Oct. 7 was at its onset, and in the absence of a more prompt and centralized response.
Elsewhere, another married couple, law enforcement officers Kobi (Israel Atias) and Nofar (Chen Amsalem), get separated while working separate shifts at the Nova Music Festival, the site of some of the day’s worst mass casualties. Educator Tali (Sara Vino) leaves her own shelter in search of her son Itamar (Nevo Katan), while Palestinian-Israeli Ayoub (Hisham Sulliman) and his family are ambushed in their minivan without regard for their heritage. By focusing on these particular people, “Red Alert” communicates the scale and trauma of Oct. 7 while avoiding some of the attacks’ most graphic elements, like sexual violence or the murder of children. Instead, Chefetz works to elevate the heroism of parents and partners who put their lives on the line to protect their loved ones, a kind of silver-lining spin on an otherwise awful moment in time.
Ayoub’s inclusion is an indication “Red Alert” does have its own political lens, a decidedly liberal one within the Israeli domestic spectrum, despite sticking closely to firsthand accounts. The agricultural worker’s face is the first we see onscreen, cradling his now-motherless infant son as Hamas fighters stage a last stand outside his improvised shelter. “Red Alert” is careful to highlight Ayoub’s difficulty securing an Israeli ID despite his long-term residence, a detail that becomes nerve-wrackingly relevant when IDF soldiers finally arrive on the scene only to hold him at gunpoint and demand he prove his loyalty. In a neat resolution, the troops quickly accept Ayoub’s crumpled receipts and school report cards. The scene is nonetheless a nod to the nuance that lies beyond the urgent, all-consuming panic of the unfolding crisis, and a queasy echo of the many such encounters that don’t end so amicably. The dialogue also often alludes to the army’s confoundingly delayed arrival, a pointed rebuke of a government — led by Netanyahu, who has yet to apologize for his role in the operational shortcomings — that failed in its duty to protect its citizens.
“Red Alert” otherwise excels at capturing the confusion and occasional absurdity of the chaos victims were left to navigate for themselves. Without uniforms, it’s almost impossible to distinguish friend from foe, leading a group of Israelis to identify themselves to soldiers via group chat selfie: “Smile so we don’t look like Hamas!” In a strange and chilling encounter, Batsheva and her daughters come across two unarmed, English-speaking men who urge her to come with them, supposedly for her safety. (Arabic-speaking Gazans and Hebrew-speaking Israelis default to English as a linguistic middle ground.) She refuses, and the men simply wander off. We never learn exactly who they are or what became of them, the lack of resolution creating a subtler sense of unease than the overt atrocities.
A disclaimer before each episode clarifies that “Red Alert” has fictionalized certain scenes. Like many scripted works inspired by true events, however, the series invokes its proximity to real life to prove its bona fides and maximize emotional impact. In a now-common device, the finale’s closing credits juxtapose actors with the people they’re portraying, a few with their faces pixelated for anonymity. Some video clips show the survivors on set, even conferring with the crew; others, in a discomfiting choice, play actual footage from Oct. 7 that Chefetz then faithfully recreated. As fraught as the reused recordings are, their overlap with the final product is the point. “Red Alert” weds itself so tightly to its source material that there’s little space left for anything else — or at least, that’s the intent. But the world beyond the show’s limited scope still looms, whether it’s deliberately invoked or not.
All four episodes of “Red Alert” are will stream on Paramount+ on Oct. 7.