Ezel

Eyüp was a good man. He trusted the people closest to him — his best friends, his girlfriend — and they set him up for a crime he didn’t commit. He went to prison. He lost everything. When he gets out, he is no longer Eyüp. He is Ezel, and he has come back with a plan that has been years in the making.

Ezel is one of the great Turkish dramas of the past two decades. It takes a revenge premise and turns it into something genuinely complex: a story about identity, loyalty, and what it costs to become someone you weren’t. Cansel Elçin is exceptional in the lead, and the show surrounding him keeps raising the stakes in ways that feel earned rather than sensational. Two seasons, 71 episodes, and an ending that holds up. The IMDb score of 8.2 from tens of thousands of votes gives you a sense of how seriously this show is taken by people who have watched a lot of television.