We Were the Lucky Ones

In 1938, the Kurc family gather for Passover at the family home in the Polish city of Radom. Their professional successes and prosperity shield them somewhat from the virulent anti-semitism in the country. After the war begins, and as Hitler's persecution of European Jewry intensifies, the family is split apart, scattered from Poland to the Soviet Union, Italy, and Brazil. Once the war ends, the survivors attempt to find each other and reunite. ==Cast==

• Lior Ashkenazi as Sol Kurc, the family patriarch and proprietor of the Kurc boutique • Robin Weigert as Nechuma Kurc, the family matriarch and a seamstress • Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Genek Kurc, the oldest sibling, a lawyer, married to Herta (Rosenblatt) • Hadas Yaron as Mila Kurc, the second oldest sibling, married to Selim and mother of Felicia • Logan Lerman as Addy Kurc, the middle sibling, who lives in Paris, where he is pursuing a career as a composer • Amit Rahav as Jakob Kurc, the second youngest sibling, a law student with a passion for photography, and the boyfriend of Bella • Joey King as Halina Kurc, the youngest sibling, who works as a lab assistant for her brother-in-law, Selim • Moran Rosenblatt as Herta Seifert, Genek's wife • Ido Samuel as Isaac, a loyal friend. His relationship with the Kurc family is painfully tested by his role in the Jewish Police or Judenrat • Michael Aloni as Selim Kajler, a doctor, Mila's husband and Felicia's father • Nitai Levi as Eryk, a young man who escaped a labour camp in Lvov • Artemisia Pagliano as Young Felicia Kajler • Belle Swarc as Felicia Kajler • Nicole Brydon Bloom as Caroline, an American who works for the Embassy in Brazil. • Lihi Kornowski as Elisabeth (Eliska) Lowbeer, a Jewish refugee from Prague who meets Addy as they flee Europe for Brazil • Marin Hinkle as Madame Lowbeer, Eliska's mother • Eva Feiler as Bella Tatar, Jakob's girlfriend and childhood sweetheart • Elliot Levey as Henry Tatar, Bella's father • Madeleine Worrall as Gustava Tatar, Bella's mother • Anita Adam Gabay as Anna Tatar, Bella's sister • Sam Woolf as Adam Eichenwald, an architect lodging with the Kurc family who falls in love with Halina • Marina Bye as Rahel, a member of the Jewish Resistance in Poland ==Episodes==

The series is produced by 20th Television and is adapted by Erica Lipez from the 2017 Georgia Hunter book We Were The Lucky Ones, a New York Times Best Seller inspired by the story of her own family. Lipez also serves as showrunner and executive producer. Thomas Kail is director and executive producer, along with Adam Milch and Jennifer Todd who executive produces for Old 320 Sycamore and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon who executive produces for Pearl Street Films. The score is composed by Rachel Portman and Jon Ehrlich. Casting Joey King, Logan Lerman, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Amit Rahav and Hadas Yaron were cast as siblings who grow up in Radom, Poland with Lerman's role of Addy Kurc based on Hunter's real-life grandfather. Both King and Lerman have discussed having family members themselves who escaped The Holocaust. Most of the characters are Polish Jews and these roles are mostly played by Jewish actors from the United States, Israel and England. The role of Madame Lowbeer is portrayed by a non-Jewish actress, Marin Hinkle, who has a real-life Jewish husband and raised their son as a Jew. Filming Filming took place from December 2022 and finished in spring 2023. Primarily filming took place in Bucharest, Romania with filming locations also including Málaga and Cádiz in Spain. ==Release==

We Were the Lucky Ones premiered on Hulu in the United States on March 28, 2024. Internationally, the series was released on Disney+. ==Reception==

Viewership TVision, using its Power Score to evaluate CTV programming through viewership and engagement across over 1,000 apps, calculated that We Were the Lucky Ones was the fourth most-streamed series from March 25–31. Luminate, which gathers viewership data from certain smart TVs in the U.S, announced that We Were the Lucky Ones was watched for 147.2 million minutes from March 29 to April 4. Critical response The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 95% approval rating with an average rating of 8/10, based on 22 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Equal parts harrowing and life-affirming, We Were the Lucky Ones is a sensitively told tale of perseverance given tear-inducing heart by its wonderful ensemble." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the limited series a "generally favorable" score of 80 out of 100, based on 13 critics. RogerEbert.com concluded that "We Were the Lucky Ones is a defiant and harrowing, soul shattering story—one that gives the full range of the horrors that occur when you've been displaced, unmoored, and dehumanized." Aramide Tinibu of Variety also praised the series: "Spending extended time with each member of the Kurcs allows the viewer to get into their psyche while absorbing differing perspectives and opinions instead of a monolithic overview of Holocaust survivors." The Jewish parenting website Kveller praised the series as "a visceral, touching, sweeping and profoundly human show, one of the best you'll see all year, and the Jewish representation in it is deeply thoughtful, perhaps more than any show I’ve ever seen." The Boston Globe concluded: "So yes, the miniseries is challenging, and steeped in heartbreak, and unrelenting. But it joins a growing inventory of important, eye-opening, memorable, and timely TV takes on the Holocaust and World War II. Ultimately it is as rewarding as it is harrowing." Accolades We Were the Lucky Ones was one of 200 television series that received the ReFrame Stamp for the years 2023 to 2024. The stamp is awarded by the gender equity coalition ReFrame and industry database IMDbPro for film and television projects that are proven to have gender-balanced hiring, with stamps being awarded to projects that hire female-identifying people, especially women of color, in four out of eight key roles for their production. == References ==