Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Protector’ On Netflix, A Turkish Drama Where A Guy With Dreams Becomes An Indestructible Hero

Istanbul is a fascinating city, with the modern and the ancient sitting side by side. It’s a center of business and commerce, but it also has to deal with a battle-scarred history that has spanned millennia. That’s the setup for The Protector, which breaks Netflix’s cycle of depressing and cynical international dramas. Read on to find out about one of the winter’s more engaging shows…

THE PROTECTOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see up the barrel of a gun, and it’s shot, with the bullet moving in slow motion towards a man’s head. The voice over goes, “In fairy tales, good people always win. Justice is served sooner or later, and time heals every wound. However, this is not a fairy tale.”

The Gist: Hakan (Çagatay Ulusoy) is a guy in his 20s who works for his father Neset (Yücel Erten) in a small antique shop in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. But he has dreams that start with a downtown antique shop he’d open with his cousin Memo (Cankat Aydos) in the shadow of the headquarters of the real estate company run by his hero, Faysal Erdem (Okan Yalabik). But Neset won’t lend them money because he thinks the two of them are immature and impulsive.

Erdem has put in a bid to renovate the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia, but others are in competition… until, of course, they’re no longer in the picture, so to speak. It shows that Erdem, who built his empire from circumstances not unlike Hakan’s, will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Hakan discovers when he visits an Erdem property to deliver a rug that Erdem is hiring, so he decides on-the-spot to interview. Erdem’s assistant Leyla (Okan Yalabik) scoffs at Hakan’s confidence and lack of college degree during the interview, even when Hakan reminds her that Erdem never went to college. As he’s leaving, he saves a girl from a falling chandelier, and Erdem notices. He tells Leyla to hire him.

A woman named Suzan (Defne Kayalar) has come into the shop looking for a Ottoman-era shirt, which Hakan knows they have but Neset says isn’t for sale. We know Suzan is connected to Erdem — she talks about the shirt to Erdem’s henchman Mazhar (Mehmet Kurtulus) — but Hakan does not. Desperate, Hakan and Memo go behind Neset’s back and try to sell the shirt to Suzan; right after Neset finds him, gunfire erupts and he gets hit. He tells Hakan to take him to a pharmacist friend Kemal (Yurdaer Okur) and his daughter Zeynep (Hazar Ergüçlü). When Neset dies, the pair tell Hakan to put on the shirt; it’s necessary for him to become The Protector, whose duty is to stop The Immortal.

Our Take: The Protector is a surprisingly engaging show that combines mystical elements with modern business rivalries and the dreams of one regular guy. Part of the reason why the show is so engaging is that two of the producers have been involved in some of the more popular American-made movies and dramas of the past few years: Jason George (Narcos, Scandal) and Alex Sutherland (Argo). The first episode has been one of the few that we’ve seen lately that sets up the series’ story at a decently speedy pace, not relying on the luxury of Netflix’s “drop ’em all at once” model to languidly set things up over multiple episodes.

We have a feeling where this is going to go — whose money is on Erdem being The Immortal? — but it’ll be interesting to watch Hakan learning how to be The Protector as well as work for Erdem. We know that Leyla will probably come into play as a love interest, and that Kemal and Zeynep are there to train and protect him, probably from himself. It’s an interesting story, set against the backdrop of modern Istanbul, and the performances are compelling enough to make this one fun to watch.

Sex and Skin: Hakan has sex with the tourist he delivers the rug to. Not sure where that will lead, but it’s there.

Parting Shot: We come back to the gunshot; it bounces off Hakan’s head, knocking him down. He is indeed invincible after donning the shirt. We see Kemal and Zeynep from Hakan’s perspective on the floor, with Kemal saying, “Now you can ask whatever you want.”

Sleeper Star: Even though Cankat Aydos’ Memo is kind of an idiot — he gambles away the rent money and gets him and Hakan kicked out of their apartment — he’s also very loyal to Hakan, and seems to be standing up to the people that captured him after the gun battle happened. It’ll be interesting to follow him a bit.

Most Pilot-y Line: After Neset chides Hakan for not being an adult and tells him to not speak so harshly to his father, Hakan impetuously says, “You’re not my father.” Yes, Neset found Hakan in an orphanage, but that exclamation sounds like something a 14-year-old would say.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode is very engaging and the idea of this ancient battle taking place in modern Istanbul is very intriguing to us.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Protector on Netflix