Sky season two: On par with a Netflix production. After a rather long wait: The new season of Sky began airing this week • Was it worth the wait? Here’s what we had to say about the season’s first episodes!

Moshe Abutbul | Frogi/Ynet

Sky’s first season was well-made, and right off the bat it seemed to be a show that could do well overseas by any measure, but I really didn’t expect the second season, which began airing recently (TeenNick on Yes and HOT) to feel even more substantial than the excellent first season.

To recap the story: Things pick up around a week after the events of the previous season’s finale – Sky’s in space, Aric is filled with longing, and Millie returns to a reality that’s completely different from what it was before her holiday in Alaska. But then an evil alien shows up and changes everything!

The plot twist (which we won’t reveal, for those who still haven’t watched the episodes) is surprising and quite ingenious! It livens up the story, gives it a great starting point, and gives even less major characters a different perspective and a larger stage.

The writing is sharper, the show’s humor is even better than in the previous season (and we absolutely consider the first season to be a dramedy!), everything is simply better. Starting with the incredible cinematography, that is absolutely on the level of a Netflix show, or any other foreign production. Everything looks great and is shot in an excellent, spectacular fashion, to the extent that it’s surprising that something like that is done in Israel, especially in a teen show!

The work of the new director (who is also taking over the season directing duties for the first time), Omer Goldman, who herself is an alum of series in similar genres (and specifically some created by Sky’s showrunners), is precise, inspiring and has a comedic timing that really got us lauging! It’s another notable change in the show, and it deserves recognition. She was a great choice for director and she’s done excellent work on the project.

The writing is also noticeably a bit different, but it still retains the unique style we fell in love with when Sky’s first season aired. While Giora Chamizer and Noa Pnini wrote it together, but at the season’s premiere, they told us that Pnini took the lead this season, and she deserves kudos. We never thought we’d fall in love with the show all over again to this extent, and in its second season at that.

And huge props to the performers – we don’t know what you’ve been doing between seasons – but each and every one of you is incredible! I tend not to be effusive in my praise, but while watching the episodes for the first time, I just wanted to applaud during so many scenes.

Ido Tako is great at the dramatic side and as a leading man, Shahar Tavoch and Dolev Sela are the duo with the bizarre, hilarious sense of humor, and the parts are perfectly suited for them, Maayan Rachima reveals herself to be an excellent comedic actor, and Ofek Pesach is a brilliant actor, and you can’t help but fall in love with him and his character’s naïveté.

Bar Miniely and Ravid Ronen play off one another in a perfect combination of viciousness and snark. Their scenes together, aided by top-notch directorial work, are the best thing about the show, the faces they make are something else, and their acting is simply on a whole new level.

In short, Sky’s second season had a great start, with a refreshing atmosphere and a sense of raising the bar. Everything’s funnier, more precise, more impressive, more like a foreign production. It is a testament to the quality of filmmaking on Israeli television today, and who knows, it might even end up on Netflix or another streaming service eventually…