Why has Netflix’s Israeli juvenile prison series Bad Boy been such a huge success?

A thirteen‑year‑old boy is arrested at home in a dawn raid and sent to prison. Sound familiar? This is not Adolescence 2.0 but Bad Boy, a gripping Israeli coming‑of‑age TV series set inside a juvenile detention centre near Tel Aviv. It has reached the Netflix Top 10 charts in 46 countries and is the best-performing Middle Eastern title on the streaming service this year. It also swept the Israeli TV Academy Awards with seven wins including Best Drama Series.

Stand-up comedian Daniel Chen, 35, who plays his adult self in the show, is haunted by his experience in prison. The eight episodes interweave flashbacks of teenage Dean Sheinman (as he was then) in detention with present‑day stand‑up sets from adult Daniel, offering insight into how humour became his survival tool.

Co‑created and co-written by Ron Leshem, known for Euphoria, and filmmaker Hagar Ben‑Asher (Long Bright River, The Slut), this tale of friendship and prison survival charts a journey towards purpose through comedy.

Twenty years ago, as a young journalist, Ron spent time in a juvenile prison (kids 12-18) to research the story of children born to this fate. “Statistically more than 95 percent of children born to mothers in jail will go to jail themselves,” he tells me. “And I felt compelled to tell their story.”

Film and TV executives told him that no one wants to see a jail story about 12- to 18-year-olds. But two decades later he discovered that one of Israel’s prime time comedians was hiding a secret – he was incarcerated in that very same prison that Ron had spent so much time in. “And I suddenly realised that the humour is the key,” says Ron. “This is the birth of the soul of a comedian and it creates a unique voice.”

Ron, with Hagar now on board, knew he wanted to make a show about a successful comedian who started his life in prison and that is what happened to Daniel. He became a stand-up comedian in prison, and he survived prison, even though he was tiny and fragile. Humour saved his life. “This is what we were lured to, because thematically, it is a moving notion that art is a form that can save the world and with everything happening now in the world, we felt that we were delivering some sort of message.”

Ron now lives and works in Boston and Hagar works in New York but they decided to make the show in Israel because “you get complete freedom there”.

They couldn’t find a prison to shoot in so despite a tiny budget they built one – on the foundations of a scout camp. “There are no criminals in Israel, so there’s are no prisons,” he jokes.

With his journo hat on Ron spoke to Daniel’s mother, other people who had been in prison with him, and the prison guards. But the real research happened in London. Daniel has ADHD and finds it difficult to focus so Ron took him to London, “and we walked for a week and a half and I recorded him telling the story when he had nothing to distract him. Later on it was about trying to write what is important for us, and explore from within and just use him as an inspiration. “

The majority of the cast are not professional actors, and there is quite a lot of improvisation in the show. The teenager who plays Dean stood out at the audition; he appeared to instinctively understand the story as he suffers badly with ADHD himself.

“I could easily see him making one bad decision and having the exact same life story, because he’s a wild kid,” says Ron.

There were more than 100 kids in the facility that Ron went to 20 years ago. “I had this overriding feeling that they would all be either dead by 20 or living as gangsters. They all go back and forth from jail, but the fact is that they were brought up and even born into this fate and they never stood a chance. Bad Boy is about how society cruelly creates this destiny and our guy is the rare case – the one who was able, thanks to the humour, to survive and get out of this.”

Executive producer Emilio Schenker says: “I think that this show, even though it has a lot of depth, offers a light in the darkness. The beauty of the story is that it is full of hope.”

There is a lot of focus in the series on the relationship between Dean and his single mother, whose decision to call the police on him creates lasting guilt and emotional distance. “I think she knows what her mistakes were, but having seen the series she also thinks that we were full of empathy towards her,” says Ron. “Ultimately she is a character that you can’t really hate – you feel sorry for her, you understand her, you don’t even blame her.”

Dean also forms a deep yet conflicted friendship with Zoro, a feared fellow inmate charged with murder. This bond proves to be a lifeline.

There has been hugely positive feedback on Bad Boy, especially from comedians, actors and people who expose themselves on stage or in the media, because they feel the series shows how intense and fragile their existence is.

Bad Boy opened the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 and was the first Israeli show to have the proper red carpet treatment there. Ron says: “The themes are global – it’s not a show about being Jewish or Israeli. So many people are watching it, and we realise we’ve made something that can affect people who are not from our little bubble. That’s very powerful.”

Bad Boy is on Netflix