The Tailor is a show in a hurry. In the last six months, three seasons of it have debuted on Netflix, becoming unexpected hits in the process. Season 1 was a surprisingly engaging melodrama. Season 2 was more of the same. But The Tailor Season 3 is rapidly running out of thread, finding ways to extend a story that could have feasibly ended after the first season and definitely should have ended after the second.
Thanks to The Tailor’s uniquely speedy release cadence, writing about it is something of a chore. One can barely differentiate each new season from the last, which isn’t helped by the fact they’re barely any different anyway. I have no idea what Netflix is doing with this property, and for the first time, after the latest eight episodes, I’m not sure what director Cem Karci is planning for it either.
The Tailor Season 3 review and plot summary
Both the first and second seasons of The Tailor were about well-to-do fashion designer Peyami, his familial secrets, and his whirlwind romance with Esvet, the abused wife of his psychotic best friend, Dimitri. The third season is too. But the previous seasons were also about other things besides, including a quite touching family dynamic, whereas the third season is not.
While it’s ironic for Netflix to release a show about a playboy carrying on with another man’s wife unexpectedly every few months like a venereal disease, I don’t imagine that’s intentional. Dimitri deserves it, anyway – he’s nuts, and his being nuts forms the central tension of the latest eight episodes, since Peyami and Esvet sneak around under his nose all the time, worrying about what he might do if he catches them.
On the script level, there is little doubt this has barely been considered. The core dynamic is kept in a holding pattern of Peyami and Esvet cavorting and Dimitri playing sleuth, with no real subplots or interesting themes to buttress the love triangle as there was – to some extent, anyway – before. The compromise is that the episodes are short, though that seems a small consolation for a story that still wouldn’t fill half as many.
I worry about this for a few reasons. One is that it implies The Tailor is perfectly happy to go on forever, introducing a conceit each season and dancing around it for seven episodes, only addressing the matter in the eighth just in time for the season to end with no resolution. The other is that the cast seems to have realized that they might be stuck here for the rest of their careers, and it comes through. Everyone sulks, all the time – the audience included.
There’s a more interesting show in the margins of this one. I always thought The Tailor was better when it was embroiled in Peyami’s complex parentage, and while there’s a little of that here in Kiraz, it’s left by the wayside for the most part. The mistaken belief is that viewers are only interested in watching Peyami and Esvet gaslight Dimitri for seven episodes. Initially, you were supposed to root for Peyami to save Esvet because Dimitri was crazy, but they’re all pretty much welcome to each other now.
Since I’m in a charitable mood, I can at least acknowledge that on a technical level, The Tailor remains an impressively upscale bit of work. The third season might have duller direction and framing than the previous two overall, but it knows a nice image when it sees one, and the costuming is reliably exquisite. Even the performances help to elevate characters who have been written into a dull funk, but the patience of everyone involved is visibly wearing thin.
A new low point for the series
The Tailor Season 3 is, pretty inarguably, the worst of the series thus far. And the first two weren’t great. They were, however, much more enjoyable than they had any right to be, steeped in family melodrama and sneaky tension. The latest eight episodes find The Tailor becoming the sort of show you might have imagined it was from reading the premise; a facile, circuitous time-waster.
I’ll see you back here in two months for Season 4, I suppose.
What did you think of The Tailor Season 3? Comment below.
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