Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Shahmaran’ On Netflix, A Supernatural Tale Of Two People Tied By Mysticism And Legend (2024)

You need patience to watch a show likeShahmaran, which deals with a legend involving a mythical half-woman, half-snake creature. The new Turkish drama has elements of mysticism and fantasy, of course, but it’s also romantic, in a quirky way.

SHAHMARAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Snakes slither on the ground towards a man standing on a cliff. A voice over says, “Since the creation of the world, human beings have betrayed everything they loved.”

The Gist: Sashu (Serenay Sarikaya), a PhD candidate from Istanbul, is on a train out to Adana to give a guest lecture at a university. But before she does that, she has to attend to some personal business: She takes a taxi out to the countryside and confronts her grandfather Davut (Mustafa Ugurlu), who left her mother behind decades ago. She thinks her mother never confronted him so she’s doing so on his behalf, since her mother recently died.

A girl from the property next door sees Sashu and runs to Maran (Burak Deniz), who lives in the complex with her, and gushes that she thinks she’s the “one.” Maran dismisses it.

But Sashu is having visions she can’t explain, similar visions to what her mother had. And when the town is shut down for an annual festival, the hotel manager sends us to a nearby lake, where she can submerge herself and have some peace. She encounters Maran there. He knows who she is, but isn’t all that interested in bringing him into her life, despite the fact that a legend that the others in his house believe and foster says that the two of them are destined to be together.

Davut comes into town to give her letters her mother sent him, where she talks about the same “sleep talking” Sashu has, but she says her medication isn’t working to head them off anymore.

At the festival as Sashu wanders through looking at the sites, her grandfather is there, but he doesn’t approach. She sees Maran but doesn’t want to talk to him. A mysticist talks to her about the legend of the Shahmaran, and to let it guide her when it comes to love. She takes the necklace that’s offered to her, though she feels it’s a silly superstition. But soon, she’s confronted with a raging fire that gets out of control when she approaches; the necklace burns a scar on her, then, right before she passes out, Maran picks her up and takes her out.

She wakes up the next day at Davut’s house, not knowing how she got there. The burn is gone, and Maran is denying anything ever happened. But he goes back to the group, led by Ural (Mahir Gunsiray), and says no one should tell Sashu the truth, even though they all know that the fire was the first omen that Sashu is the one.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We looked up “shows with mysticism” to find an analogue toShahmaran, and the obvious choice hit us immediately; the show has a lot ofTop Of The Lake in it.

Our Take:Shahmaran’s first episode moves a bit slowly, but it certainly is paced that way on purpose. Director Umur Turagay and writer Pinar Bulut are trying to build some mystery around Sashu and her presence in Adana. It starts as her being the city person that’s a bit out of place in the small town, where people know each other and are semi-skeptical of outsiders. But the dance between her and Maran is what’s central by the end of the first episode. And that languid pacing makes a whole lot of sense by the time we get to that point.

Sashu is bold and adventurous, and most of all, a grown-ass woman, not the giggling artsy-fartsy girls that Maran deals with at Ural’s house. Sashu is substantial, and Maran knows that by bringing her into this “fated” situation is going to give her a life that she doesn’t want. But the two are going to be drawn together nevertheless, and it’ll be fascinating to watch this happen, despite both members of this pairing doing all they can to resist it.

What actual legend is being examined is still a little vague. If you look up the legend of the shahmaran, it gives an indication of where we’re going here. It also helps that when you make a portmanteau of Sashu and Maran’s names, it makes something similar to the word shahmaran. So that’s something to look for as the series goes on. We just hope that things develop a bit faster than what we saw in the first episode, which was not so much confusing as it was just plain mysterious, and not in a good way.

Sex and Skin: Some brief nudity, but just in flashes. Even when Sashu takes that dip in the lake, she keeps her bra and panties on.

Parting Shot: As Sashu looks at the house next door from the balcony of her grandfather’s home, we see Maran in the woods. He opens his eyes and we see that the color has changed, as if he’s some sort of other being.

Sleeper Star: Mehmet Bilge Aslan and Elif Nur Keruk play Salih and Medine, who work for Davut. They approach Sashu at the festival and try to defend their boss. They had a bunch of funny lines in that scene that shows us that the series has at least a little bit of a sense of humor.

Most Pilot-y Line: Sashu is taken by surprise when the hotel manager calls him “ma’am.” She asks him how old he is and he says 35. “You’re older than I am,” she replies. It’s one of those moments that takes up running time but doesn’t say much about Sashu or the story.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While things at the end of the first episode ofShahmaran, Serenay Sarikaya’s striking presence as Sashu, along with just enough intrigue in the mystery surrounding the story, will keep us watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.