The Frog (TV series)

The Frog is an Iranian crime and mystery TV series written, edited and directed by Houman Seyyedi and produced by Ali Asadzadeh, produced in 2020–2021. It is Houman Seyyedi's first episodic project, the first episode of which was supposed to be released on December 15, 2020, but was delayed by a court order. Eventually, the first episode aired on December 23, 2020.

Plot
"In The world is a small place for me, I feel closed everywhere and I can not breathe. It's as if I've seen all these moments before, the trees, the sound of the waterfall, the frogs, I see them when I'm dying."

On Chaharshanbe Suri, three friends named Ramin (Saber Abr), Farid (Ashkan Hassanpour), and Javad (Shahrooz Del Afkar) after stealing the weapon of a wounded officer, rob Noori (Navid Mohammadzadeh), Ramin's childhood classmate, who has become a rich and mysterious man...

Production
The Frog is the first series directed by Houman Seyyedi and is also Navid Mohammadzadeh's first series. Filming started in 2019 and was stopped due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus, filming finished in the summer of 2020 and 15 episodes were produced. The filming of the Frog took about two years.

Distribution
Negotiations were held for the release of the series on Netflix, but no agreement was reached, and the series was finally released on Namava (an Iranian streaming service). The first episode of the series is an open interpretation of La Haine. 48 hours after the release of the first episode, the series set a record with 40 million views in Iranian home video.

Critical response
Massoud Farasati criticized the series in Haft program and said: "In my opinion, The Frog is not so bad. I think we can talk about this series and especially about directing. I think Seyyedi is ahead of his previous film, but its script is weak."

Brian O’Shea, CEO of The Exchange: "Houman is an undeniable talent and rising star. His award-winning features honed his incredible eye and ability to pace a suspenseful story and build a complex world filled that entertains audiences that love all genres. We are incredibly happy to bring this amazing series to the rest of the world. Much like Fauda, Elite, and others, this foreign language series is primed to take the world by storm."