Superbly convincing: Unorthodox reviewed

When I lived briefly in Stamford Hill I was mesmerised by the huge fur hats (shtreimel) worn by the local Hasidic Jews, and the wigs worn by their wives, and the almost tubercular pallor of their children. I often wondered how such a remote, aloof and archaic sect could possibly relate to 21st-century London. The answer, of course, was that they didn’t: they were like ghosts from another age, walking the same streets but not of this world. I wished I could get a glimpse of their private lives — and now, thanks to Unorthodox (Netflix), we all can.

Loosely based on a memoir by Deborah Feldman, it tells the story of 19-year old Esther ‘Esty’ Shapiro (Shira Haas) who flees her ultraorthodox Jewish sect in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a new life in very secular Berlin. We begin in medias res with the flight, then little by little, through flashbacks, we piece together why.

Not that it’s exactly a puzzle. As a woman in such a sect you are essentially a baby-making machine on a mission — apparently — to replace the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Within minutes of celebrating your arranged marriage, you’re expected to start breeding with your unfamiliar, unworldly and almost inevitably chauvinistic husband; then, when you’re done, you start all over again.

For blokes, I imagine, it’s a pretty good deal: cool kit, lots of quality man time, no feminist nonsense. But you can see why if, like Esty, you’re an intelligent, ambitious woman with a hinterland (books, music) plus a medical problem that makes it painful to consummate your marriage, it might not be the ideal scenario.

Then again, groovy, liberated, multicultural Berlin is pretty insufferable too: all these smug music students from impeccably diverse backgrounds smirking delightedly about how back home in Nigeria of course they’d never be allowed to enjoy an openly gay relationship.