What to watch in Israel this week: Gal Gadot, 'Hooligans' is bold, ‘American Classic’ charms

But while the competition will show the glory of professional soccer, there is another side to the sport, and that was showcased in the Israeli series, "Hooligans," which is still available to stream on the KAN website (kan.org.il).

He doesn’t even watch the games, but during a brawl one night following a match, he takes pity on the home team’s toughest supporters, who are losing their fight, and gets arrested along with them.

These fans run a crime gang and stir up trouble at soccer matches. They appreciate his help and do not know that the police have enlisted him to spy on them.

It’s a violent crime series that does not flinch from showing the ugly side of a sport whose most extreme fans sometimes engage in antisocial behavior.

Speaking of antisocial behavior, "Euphoria," which can be streamed on HBO Max, has come to a close with a very disappointing ending that magnified the flaws that have plagued the third and final season.

This frank look at a teen culture plagued by drugs, sex, heartbreak, and venality is an adaptation of an Israeli series that ran two seasons in 2012 and 2013, and the US version captured its spirit in its first two seasons.

But in this third season, when it could take no more inspiration from the Israeli version, its creator, Sam Levinson, moved its young cast into the dark underbelly of the drug and sex trades.

Its doomed teens became doomed young adults. While I am loath to reveal spoilers, since many may still not have seen the finale, its centerpiece was a death that was foreshadowed in the very first episode of the first season.

The finale then pivoted away from its young cast to a supporting character, Ali (Colman Domingo), a formerly middle-class man who lost everything because of his drug addiction.

Once he got clean, he became a devoted mentor to Rue (Zendaya), the drug-addled main protagonist. The finale sees him in despair over his work, trying to help young drug addicts.

He picks up a weapon we never knew he had and heads for a shootout with the pimp/strip club owner, Alamo (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), to avenge a death that has torn him apart.

This wasn’t badly done, but it seems to come from a different series, maybe one directed by Quentin Tarantino. We barely see most of the heroines in this episode, which made me realize that the heart of the series was always the complicated relationships among this group of young women facing difficult dilemmas and conflicts.

In the end, Ali heads for a religious community in the Texas desert, where a patriarch presides over a large brood in a house adorned with multiple crucifixes, next to an American flag that blows in the wind.

Rue spent a few days in this community after she was lost in the desert in the opening episode and warmed to them, while one of the young women there was curious and asked her about the outside world.

She kept thinking back on them throughout the season and began listening to a Bible audiobook and reading it as well.

The patriarch gives a warm welcome to Ali, so we know he’s not a racist, but if the series were to continue and focus on this cult, wouldn’t it turn out that it was as predatory as every other framework or group Rue found throughout her life?

Is a Christian religious cult really being presented as an antidote to the horrors of the drug culture and prostitution/porn industry?

I couldn’t decide if the series creators were being heavily ironic at the end or not, but it seemed to me finally that they weren’t.

The only good life "Euphoria" can envision involves prayers, long skirts and long sleeves, abstinence, and farming.

Ali seems to believe, at the end, that there’s no way to step out of this Christian bubble without falling prey to opioid addiction or the sex trade, a message oddly out of step with the rest of Hollywood. It’s certainly surprising to see it in an HBO series.

Colman Domingo, a fine and distinctive actor, is having a moment, and he is also one of the stars of "The Four Seasons," the Netflix series co-created by Tina Fey of "30 Rock," which recently released its second season.

It is about three couples who have been friends since college and how their lives change as they get into their 50s, and it’s based on an Alan Alda movie of the same name.

Each season has two episodes set in each of the four seasons. Colman plays Danny, a charismatic but often dissatisfied gay man who has settled down with his Italian husband, Claude (Marco Calvani).

Much of the first season circled around how straitlaced Kate (Tina Fey) and her increasingly unhinged teacher husband, Jack (Will Forte), coped when the marriage of their best friends, Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney), broke up. Nick got involved with a much younger woman, Ginny (Erika Henningsen).

But except for one episode this season – a flashback – Nick is gone, and Ginny is pregnant with his baby in the early episodes, and then has to cope with being a new mother.

One way to describe American Classic could be “'Schitt’s Creek' with theater,” but it’s much better than that sounds.

It’s available on Yes Binge, Cellcom TV, Hot VOD, and Next TV, and will begin running on Hot 3 starting on June 17.

"American Classic" is a rarity: a sophisticated dramedy with above-average writing and a feel-good series.

Those good feelings come from the two stars who head the cast, Kevin Kline as Richard Bean, a renowned Broadway actor who performs Shakespeare, and Laura Linney as Kristen Bean, his sister-in-law, a former actress who has become a small-town mayor.

Both actors are well-known for their theater roles, and you can just feel how happy they are to be portraying stage actors here.

"American Classic" is about what happens when Richard has a major meltdown after playing the title role in a new production of King Lear – he hurls Shakespearean epithets at a critic who has given him a terrible review.

Someone films his outburst, and these epithets are taken for homophobia, and he is canceled, at least temporarily. Just then, he learns that his mother has died, and he heads home to the small town where his parents ran a well-regarded theater company known for presenting the classics, where he received his training.

His father (Len Cariou, also a Tony Award-winning stage actor) is suffering from dementia. He comes out of the closet every other day, while his sister-in-law (Linney) and his brother Jon (Jon Tenney) have started renting out the theater to low-brow touring companies to survive financially.