Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Tailor’ On Netflix, About A Fashion Designer With Secrets And A Caretaker With Some Of Her Own

When a show has to do plot gymnastics to get to its premise, it’s almost never good. What do we mean by plot gymnastics? It’s when the characters are put through extreme events in order to position them where they need to be to move the main plot forward. A new Turkish drama on Netflix puts its main characters through so many plot gymnastics, it made us tired just watching it.

THE TAILOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man stands behind a black door, then opens it up to the backstage frenzy right before a fashion show starts.

The Gist: Peyami Dokumacı (Cagatay Ulusoy) is a famous 31-year-old designer and tailor in Istanbul, and we see what he deals with during a runway show, including one of his models being boned by his friend and financier Dimitri (Salih Bademci), right before she goes to the runway.

At the afterparty, and the after-afterparty at Peyami’s modern mansion, Dimitri holds court, snorting coke and flirting with every woman around Peyami’s pool. Then Peyami’s assistant Suzi (Ece Sükan) comes to him with bad news: Peyami’s grandfather (Engin Senkan) has died.

This is a huge blow for a couple of reasons. For one, Peyami learned the tailoring trade from his grandfather; also, Peyami was raised by his grandparents, and we soon find out why. His father Mustafa (Olgun Şimşek) is severely developmentally disabled. In essence, his father has the mind of a child, and in a flashback, a grade-school-aged Peyami is bullied when his dad, nicknamed “Master Looney” comes around the schoolyard with cotton candy to share.

Peyami’s grandmother Sulun tells him that, now that his grandfather is gone, she and Mustafa are going to move into Peyami’s house. He reluctantly agrees, but the shame over his father propels him to keep his presence a secret; he instructs Suzi that any caregiver he hires needs to sign an NDA.

One of the first things he does when he gets back to Istanbul is to do a final fitting for Dimitri and his fiancée Esvet (Şifanur Gül) for their wedding. One caveat: It’s a religious tradition in Dimitri’s family that men don’t see brides in their wedding dresses before the wedding day. Dimitri basically dares Peyami to do the fitting blindfolded.

When Dimitri goes up to get Esvet, though, we see that he’s harboring a secret of his own: He’s an abusive prick. He actually had her locked in a trunk, sweating and sobbing, before she got in her dress for Peyami. As the fitting goes on, we see Esvet’s red-eyed, teary face under her veil; she has no idea how to get out from Dimitri’s clutches at this point.

After Mustafa has a fit that forces Peyami’s grandmother to strap him to the floor of his room, Peyami looks at documents that his grandfather hid away, because he didn’t want to relive his worst days. Among the documents is a form where Mustafa relinquishes parental rights to Peyami to his father, and then a picture of Mustafa getting married to an unidentified woman. It gives Peyami an idea of where he came from, but it just makes him feel worse.

Soon, a candidate for caretaker appears for an interview, introducing herself as Firuze. It’s actually Esvet, whom Peyami has met but has never seen before.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While the plots aren’t the same, The Tailor (Original Tile: Terzi) has the same kind of sensationalist vibe as American shows like Revenge or Scandal.

Our Take: The first episode of The Tailor spends its 47 minutes doing some pretty extensive plot gymnastics to set up the basic story, which is two people with secrets trying really hard to not get those secrets found out. Those gymnastics are so extreme that we spent the first half hour of the series trying to figure out whether all of the plot devices writers Rana Mamatlıoğlu and Bekir Baran Sıtkı threw in were actually going anywhere or were just there to make things wierd.

The first triple flip we encountered involved Peyami’s heritage. Listen, it’s not inconceivable that someone as developmentally disabled as Mustafa could father a child. But, given how wealthy and sheltered Peyami’s grandparents were, we really had to wonder just how and why Mustafa ended up having a child, and who he had a child with. The mystery woman in the photo Peyami found speaks to an arranged marriage of sorts, but it still doesn’t give us enough information.

Piled on top of that is the fact that Peyami is friends with Dimitri, an unrepentant asshole who is narcissistic bordering on sociopathic. We have no idea about the history between him and Esvet, but having him casually open a trunk to see her cowering inside is all the information we need to know that he’s abusive. So we don’t have much information, but we completely understand why she ran away.

But here’s where the next triple flip comes: In order to set it up that she can run away to hide in plain sight at Peyami’s house, we had to have that scene where he’s blindfolded while fitting her for the wedding dress. It’s an insane scene that generally makes no sense until you see the final scene of the episode. The only thing we thought of when we saw that scene was that he’s go good at his job that he can just measure someone by feel. But a more realistic plot device would have set the ending of the episode up better without making us roll our eyes.

Sex and Skin: There’s some “work nudity,” as we see a woman’s bare chest as she puts a dress on backstage during the fashion show.

Parting Shot: Peyami and Firuze/Esvet shake hands after she introduces herself.

Sleeper Star: Ece Sükan has the thankless role as Suzi, Peyami’s trusted assistant who has to keep all of his secrets. No salary is worth having to do that.

Most Pilot-y Line: It feels very retrograde to have a developmentally disabled character be played by an actor who isn’t disabled, but it’s even more retrograde to nickname him “Master Looney.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Tailor is melodramatic cheese, with a ridiculous plot that will likely generate even more eye rolls during its 7-episode season.

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.