Yissurei Efraim

Efraim Yarkon is a family man who turns even the simplest everyday events into a whirl of complications, arguments and misunderstandings.

Beside him is Sarah, his wife - the TV counterpart of the "little woman" from Kishon's writing.

Marriage, raising children, tradespeople, money, food, neighbors, institutions and bureaucracy keep supplying Efraim with fresh "torments."

The series is not a biography of Ephraim Kishon, but a comic adaptation of the persona he built for himself and his family in the humoresques he wrote over the years.

The show draws on the family world Kishon described in his writing, especially the pieces collected in Family Book.

The original stories came from different periods and exaggerated everyday life with Sarah and their children.

On TV those situations move into 1990s Israel, and the Kishon family becomes the Yarkon family.

Some episode titles match or adapt Kishon humoresque titles - among them "Av Nolad" (tied to the birth of his son Rafi), "Mischakei HaKakao," and "Hagadat HaSchnitzelim."

Before the first episode, "Av Nolad," Ephraim Kishon himself appears in a one-time introduction.

He addresses viewers as "Efraim of the torments," jokes that the characters are entirely fictional, then flips the usual disclaimer to say any resemblance to his family "is not accidental at all." He breaks the fourth wall, asks viewers not to take "young Efraim's torments" too seriously, and closes that "actually, it was quite beautiful." It is his only appearance in the series.

1. Av Nolad (26:57)
2. HaYeled Omed (24:27)
3. HaGo'al VeHaNefesh (23:45)
4. Nahariya (25:34)
5. Heikhan Kavur HaKelev (23:29)
6. Nazid Adashim (26:09)
7. Al HaGova (25:35)
8. Mischakei HaKakao (23:48)
9. Avodat Nemalim (25:32)
10. Hagadat HaSchnitzelim (23:39)
11. Dmei Chanukah Tzo'akim (26:48)
12. Shtuks, Gideon VeDragomir (26:10)
13. HaKadur Hu Meruba (finale)