Wish you weren’t here
Murder at the Dead Sea creator and writer Raz Yuvan tells DQ how she was inspired by Agatha Christie to tell this murder-mystery story, reveals the reasons for its unique setting and explains how she sought to create a new kind of female detective.
With a passion for detective stories, Raz Yuvan found inspiration in her love of Agatha Christie when she devised murder-mystery series Murder at the Dead Sea.
The project’s origins date back to 2020, when Israeli broadcaster Keshet 12 put out a call for scripted projects related to the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns. After hearing a rumour of a murder being committed in one of the country’s quarantine hotels – which turned out to be unfounded – Yuvan came up with the idea of blending that location with Christie novel And Then There Were None to tell the story of an investigator attempting to uncover a murderer.
“That’s my favourite novel of hers and I really love the idea of a deserted island,” Yuvan tells DQ. “No one can come in, no one can get out. The murderer must be someone who’s already here, one of us. I always thought, ‘Where in real life, in actual reality, could I find this deserted island?’ In reality, you can hardly be in a place where no one can reach you and you can’t reach the outside.
“Then I realised a corona hotel, in a way, is a deserted island, because no one can come in or out, and the murderer must have been one of us, and that’s why I used it. It’s not a show about corona. Corona is the thing that makes it possible.”
The resulting seven-part series blends a classic Christie whodunnit with a unique location akin to the five-star establishments seen in HBO hit The White Lotus.
Tehran star Niv Sultan plays Revi Shem-Tov, a young police officer who becomes the latest resident at an isolated and largely empty hotel standing on the shore of the Dead Sea. Set against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic, the venue is one of a number of quarantine hotels that infected strangers call their temporary home.
When Sarah Hacohen (Anna Zak) – a fragile pop icon – dies by plummeting from a balcony, what seems like suicide quickly unravels into a tangle of deceit, desire and buried crimes as Revi takes up the case. But cut off from the outside world, she must navigate a claustrophobic maze of suspects, with each hiding dark secrets. Her search for truth exposes forbidden affairs, betrayal and a deadly cover-up stretching back to a fatal overdose and a conspiracy of silence.
Inexperienced and untrusted by her superiors, Revi is initially forbidden from taking on the case. But with a murderer among the party of guests spending their time basking on the beach and in the hotel bar, she defies orders and begins to investigate.
From the outset, Yuvan (Kfula, Golda & Meir) wanted her protagonist to be a “very feminine” detective – one who is “young and fresh, not very professional” and ever so slightly clueless when it comes to solving a murder.
“I wanted her to be very vulnerable and very humane. The way she reacts to the dead body, she reacts as I would, she doesn’t want to touch it,” the series creator explains. “It was very important to me to have a new kind of female detective. I wished her to be a feminist. I wanted her to be a detective without adopting any masculine gestures or behaviour. I wanted her to use her femininity and softness as strengths and not as weaknesses. That’s why I designed her the way I did.”
Yuvan also wanted to bring Revi’s personal life into the proceedings. Beginning the story heartbroken after her lover – a married colleague – deserted her before a planned romantic vacation, Revi meets a new love interest in the quarantine hotel. “When she arrives, she meets another guy. During the season, you might think maybe he’s the one, that he’s her meant-to-be, even though he’s one of the main suspects,” Yuvan says.
Events then take a deadlier turn when more bodies are discovered, but Revi struggles to convince others that a murderer is responsible. Yuvan wanted to create a protagonist “the world doesn’t believe in,” depicting Revi struggling with self-confidence in ways other TV detectives might not.
“I wanted her to not be so sure about herself, and definitely not to be tough,” she says. “But still, I wanted her to be brilliant and to notice things other people don’t see. She’s talking with everybody. She’s like one of them. Nobody believes that this young lady who is not very professional is a real detective. Then everybody speaks with her as usual.”
Yuvan began developing the story by first imagining how the central murder might be carried out, and even visited a forensic institute where she asked how a murder might initially appear to be a natural death – as featured in the series.
“Then I was thinking who did it and why, which is the background story of what happened before the murder. By the end, it was like assembling a huge puzzle with 1,000 pieces, and thinking how Revi could build this puzzle and find out what really happened. This was the hardest part.”
In fact, it took Yuvan almost a year just to figure out the structure of the series, which is produced by Yoav Gross Productions (Red Skies) for Keshet 12, where it premiered in December. Only then did she start to consider the relationships between the show’s various characters, who also double as its chief suspects.
When it came to writing the scripts, she first wrote the whole story out like a novel, before chopping it up into episodes and refining it for production. Throughout, she always had Sultan in mind to star as Revi.
“Niv is that kind of woman. She’s a gifted actor, maybe one of the best in the world. She’s also very fragile, very modest,” the writer says. “She’s very humane. When I see her, I can see Revi, because she’s also like Revi, a bit on the edge of becoming a mature woman, but she still has this teenage vibe. So she was the perfect actor and it was a huge privilege for me that she took it, because she’s definitely an amazing actor and an amazing person as well.”
When the series went into production, cast and crew took over the Vert Hotel, which stands at the edge of the Dead Sea. But though Yuvan was present on set with director Tomer Shani (Cathago), she admits it’s not her favourite place to be. “I don’t like being on set,” she says. “I prefer being on my own, writing my stories, not talking to many people, and definitely not being on a set. The Dead Sea is also a very difficult place to be because it looks amazing, and it’s so beautiful, but it’s so hot there and so dry, so it was really difficult to shoot there.”
The writer now hopes international audiences will become as hooked on Murder at the Dead Sea as local viewers have been. Distributor Keshet International is set to launch the show to global buyers during its London TV Screenings showcase tomorrow.
“I’m happy with everything in it. I love the way it looks. I love the way it plays. I adore the actors, and I’m very pleased that we shot it on the Dead Sea, because it’s an amazing place,” she says. “On one hand, there are the red desert mountains, and on the other you have the turquoise sea in which no living creature can survive. And also, it’s a very mysterious, mystic place. It has its biblical background. That all gave it the correct atmosphere. When I see the show, I can really feel it.”
As a fan of murder mysteries who has now written one of her own, Yuvan also has a couple of tips to offer others hoping to follow her footsteps into the genre. “First of all, simplify it, because I had this intention to go into a very sophisticated story with really tiny details that the viewer had to notice,” she says. “But one of the things that would happen during the editing was that if we simplified it a bit, it’d be easier for the viewer to follow the whole story. So firstly, simplify your story.
“It is very difficult to create this puzzle,” she adds. “The relationships between the characters definitely helped me to solve situations or to give information I wanted Revi to get. So I will tell you also to deal with the characters’ relationships from the beginning and not just tell a detective story.”
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The White Lotus: At a luxury resort where the sunsets are idyllic and the guests are insufferable, a week-long vacation unravels into a slow-burn nightmare of secrets, power plays and sudden death among staff and visitors.
Tehran: A gifted Mossad hacker-agent on an undercover mission in Iran finds her operation spiralling out of control, forcing her into a tense cat-and-mouse game where every ally may be an enemy and every choice has geopolitical stakes.
The Resort: A couple on an anniversary trip to a Yucatán resort stumble across a decades-old missing-person case, pulling them into a twisting mystery that forces them to question their marriage, their memories and the truth about what happened at the hotel.
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tagged in: Keshet 12, Keshet International, Murder at the Dead Sea, Raz Yuvan, Yoav Gross Productions