There is a bit of confusion about the show When Heroes Fly, at least in terms of how it made it to my premiere list to try. The show is originally a hit Israeli TV show that was flagged as worthy of an US re-development deal for American TV. When the show hit Netflix, it seemed like the American version. It isn’t. It’s the original Israeli version. However, despite being in Hebrew and some Spanish, I found a version online to watch for the first episode called Resurrection.

The premise is a group of five men in the same unit in the war with Lebanon. They are on their last mission, and are marching five kilometres to their exit point, and in 24 hours they are all going to be back home. Their tour is done. And like every cliché ever written or produced about last missions, it goes to hell. En route, they are supposed to meet up with a larger company, but the company has been re-routed to retrieve some radio equipment. Which leaves them relatively alone. They’re about to dig in to wait, when they notice one of their tanks sitting by itself. They radio it in, discover it’s about to be destroyed to eliminate all the intel in it, and then suddenly see that the gun turret is moving — someone is still inside. They call off the air strike, get the guys from the tank out, and then the enemy attacks in force. It’s a giant shit-storm firefight, and the air strike to take out the tank is back on. The guy in charge, Azoulay (Dan Mor) is mortally wounded but still alive, unable to be transported away but the air strike is coming. So the rest of the squad has to retreat, leaving him behind. There’s an enquiry, the guy who made the decision to leave is trashed, but they are back home and messed up. But that’s not what the story is about, not really.

One of the guys is dating the sister of one of the other men, but since he comes back messed up, the relationship fails, and she takes off for South America on a trip. There’s a giant accident, and she’s killed. Fast-forward 9 more years, and one of the guys is living in Bogota. In the paper, he sees a ghost — there is a picture of the girl. Still alive. He emails back home, and the ex-boyfriend starts freaking out. Is she alive? Did her brother see a body? It looks like her in the photo, and so the guy in Bogota gets another photo from the photographer to confirm…it is clearly her. What the hell is going on? The guys have to band together and go to Bogota to find out.

I was watching with English subtitles, so it drags in a couple of places, but it is flat out awesome. I’m tempted to keep watching it with the subtitles version, it is THAT good. I know some of the future story from reading about it, and it might end up going sideways into tripe later on, or in an American version that might act more like Chuck Norris remakes than Band of Brothers, but I’m hopeful. I saw a reference to some online dubbing versions possibly, but that doesn’t really interest me. The subtitled version is awesome for the intensity of the original actors.

Fantastic show, already renewed. Not really part of my predictions though because it is the foreign version, not the Americanized version I was expecting. I’ll save my predictions if it ever makes it off the ground (still listed as “in development” on IMDB).