Over the last few weeks I became completely addicted to this Turkish Period Drama, Kurt Seyit and Shura, some 46 episodes of emotional and political turmoil. The drama is cast with extravagantly beautiful actors who float through the gorgeous sets and locations in spectacular costumes and proceed to rip your heart to shreds with a complex and agonizingly drawn-out plot that gives no quarter. Star-crossed lovers indeed. This makes Romeo and Juliet look like a walk in the proverbial park of love.

Kurt Seyit is a gallant officer in the Tsar’s army fighting during WWI, but he’s from Crimea and of Turkish extraction. He falls in love with the lovely but very young and naive Shura, a Russian aristocrat. Their families are against the match and, to make things worse, Seyit’s friend, Petro, has a bad case of envy and resentment against his old school and army friend.

The role of Shura is played by the lovely Farah Zeynep Abdullah, who is somehow able to portray a young girl falling in love without coming across as sentimental or silly. Her acting is very natural, believable and emotionally searing. She truly makes you believe that she is this naive young girl who goes through a painful transformation to adulthood in the course of one tragedy after another. By the end she is quite a different person, flawed in her handling of the difficulties she and Seyit face, but very compelling.

Kurt Seyit, played by  Kivanc Tatlitug, for some reason described as the Turkish Brad Pitt, is too much himself to be compared to any other actor: not only handsome and magnetic, he is also a natural actor: you forget he is acting. For an extremely handsome man he is also somehow devoid of ego and has a natural nobility that goes beyond star power. He quite simply is Kurt Seyit and you believe him all the way. The man could carry a dramatized version of the Tax Code – you would watch it to the end and enjoy it. I defy any woman to finish this series without developing a hopeless crush on this character.

The story is fascinating, well-acted (except for a few rather stiff secondary roles) and although the director makes a few odd decisions when it comes to the use of  flashbacks, etc, the series has a powerful emotional intensity and a heartbreaking chemistry between Kurt Seyit (his nickname is Seyit the Wolf) and Shura. The first 8 episodes are probably the most romantic television you will ever watch.

The plot is quite complex and the writer has made an effort to flesh out the characters and go into their backstories. We are shown Seyit’s family in Crimea and it becomes evident that there is a vast cultural gulf between the Russian aristocrats of Petersburg and the wealthy Turkish landowners of Crimea. The scenes in Crimea explain much about Seyit’s character and his profound attachment to his family, especially to his autocratic father.

And now that I have emerged after 46 episodes, I have to get back to reading War and Peace, doing housework and maybe cooking something other than toast. During my addiction, I somehow acquired a working knowledge of the Turkish language…