The first and second seasons of The Tailor take the viewer through the complicated life of the famous Turkish fashion designer Peyami Dokumaci and the friendship he shares with Dimitri and his wife Esvet. As season two ended on a happy note, there is not a lot waiting for the audience in the third installment of this romantic drama. The Turkish Netflix original series is directed by Cem Karci and released on the streaming platform on November 3, 2011.
This eight-episode third season is about Esvet and Peyami trying to keep as much distance from each other as possible. While Peyami is busy expanding his business, Dimitri and Esvet are on a holiday, trying to spend some time as husband and wife. Dimitri still has doubts about something simmering between his wife and best friend, but he is not willing to believe it. As Peyami arrives in Turkey after a long trip, the affair intensifies unexpectedly. Peyami and Esvet end up resorting to sneaking around like a couple of teenagers. They do not want to end the affair, as they are in love. They must come clean to Dimitri and find a safe exit for themselves. Will Dimitri, who is known to be a violent person, react aggressively to this affair, or might he end up ignoring both for the foreseeable future? The chance of Dimitri coming across news of the affair is high, and that forms the crux of the show.
The biggest point of concern throughout the runtime of this romantic drama is the lack of effort put forward into the screenplay by Rana Mamatlioglu and Bekir Baran Sitki, the writers of the show. In this season, there is no proper character development, story progression, or narrative shift throughout the length of the show. The screenplay spends seven episodes with Dimitri obsessing over the thought of his best friend having an affair with Esvet. There are no other subplots thrown in to make this show engaging. The narrative gets repetitive and dull and eventually starts beating around the bush. There is a limit to how long the audience can endure a husband snooping around after two people, managing to get no confirmation all the while. The show is exhausting to watch from the beginning, even though each episode does not have a long duration. Instead of writing and executing some believable subplots, the makers resorted to dragging the audience along into the lives of these rich people, who are nothing but sad most of the time. The representation of no communication between the husband, wife, and friend is on full display, but there seems to be no solution to their dilemma.
The lack of chemistry between Peyami and Esvet makes the viewing experience infuriating. Both are perpetually angry at each other, and there was one instance of physical altercation as well. There are constant expressions of sadness, exasperation, jealousy, anger, and cluelessness on the faces of both as well as Dimitri. The audience wonders if Peyami and Esvet aren’t happy in this relationship. Esvet was forced to get married to Dimitri, which gives her grounds to not just leave him but to seek a man who makes her happy. The relationship dynamics between Peyami and Esvet are hardly explored since they eventually acknowledge their feelings. They spend most of the time sulking, which reflects badly on the screenplay. There needed to be strong emotions that justified their conversations, but the show lacked all these aspects. The amount of time the writers spend on Dimitri assuming his wife and his best friend are having a torrid affair will wear and tear the audience and create a sense of fatigue as most of the audience will binge-watch the show.
There is a subplot involving Peyami’s mother and her relationship with Osman. There is no clarification of why this subplot was introduced because Kiraz and Osman, as siblings, did not get any definitive conclusion to their respective arcs. Kiraz meets Osman on several occasions, but what could be the concern that is bothering the two of them is not spelled out by the writers. The third season did not spend much time on the relationship dynamics between Peyami and his parents. It was the first time he had witnessed his mother and father together under one roof. The writers could have explored that relationship instead of spending time on Dimitri’s theatrics. Mustafa, Peyami’s father, had a good relationship with Esvet in the last two seasons; sadly, the relationship was completely ignored by the makers in the current one. The second season is slightly superior by the quality of work put forward by the makers, if compared to the first and the current one.
The love triangle needed to be sentimental but became abusive for the characters in the show. Peyami and Esvet quite literally gaslighted Dimitri throughout the season by denying having an affair while he spent days and weeks doubting and tracking their movements. The show also glorifies infidelity, which is a complex subject to handle. All three of them have shades of gray in the show, but the audience feels the characters had the choice to do the right thing, but the writing was obsessed with the cat-and-mouse chase between the couple and a wary husband. The two female characters in the show are given nothing to work on as actors. Esvet and Kiraz are constantly unhappy and speak in superficial dialogues that have no impact on the overall narrative.
The direction was all over the place, except in the penultimate episode. The framing of the seventh episode is excellent, and the execution from a technical point of view is good. The director was finally given a chance to expand on his skills in this episode. The third season could have been tighter, but the editing and the direction could not do wonders with a wafer-thin screenplay.
The performances of all the actors in this show are well-tuned. Olgun Simsek’s portrayal of Mustafa is still tone-deaf and insensitive towards people who suffer from mental health issues. Çagatay Ulusoy, as an actor, could not explore much in this season because there was hardly any depth given to his character. The same could be said about Sifanur Gül as Esvet, who struts in and out of frames in some gorgeous clothes but has nothing to offer as a distressed wife who is stuck in a bad marriage. Salih Bademci’s performance as Dimitri is the only redeeming aspect of the show from the start until the end. His outbursts, frustration, and impatience are justified, and the actor has done a decent job of exploring Dimitri’s dilemma.
Overall, The Tailor season three does not do justice to the romantic drama genre and quickly becomes a dull ‘affair’.
