'She and her four children feel like a new generation of Kardashians, but more substantive.

My Unorthodox Life is compelling TV that could make life more dangerous for some Jewish people: 'Haart is incredible-funny and feminist and, apparently, a very successful businesswoman,' says Jenny Singer.

While I’m sure it makes perfect sense to the algorithm, the result is an exceedingly strange, questionably authentic mix of moods, genre conventions and contrivances.' Instead of an eye-opening docuseries or a tear-jerking drama, it’s a reality show in the glossy, soapy Bravo mold. My Unorthodox Life, whose nine-episode first season just arrived on the service, is yet another story of an irrepressible woman escaping her ultra-Orthodox prison. Now Netflix, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, has finally seized the low-hanging fruit-and it’s a juicy one. But no mass-media trend stays earnest forever. Their tone tends to be somber, then triumphant. These are, for the most part, tales of trauma, abuse and repression, culminating in hard-won liberation. Along with Shtisel, a recently revived Israeli series that follows a frum family, the doc paved the way for a third Netflix project: last year’s emotional miniseries Unorthodox, which, drawing on Deborah Feldman’s widely read memoir of the same name, stars Shtisel standout Shira Haas as a young wife who flees Hasidic Brooklyn.

In 2017, as Disobedience cast Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams as ultra-Orthodox lovers, Netflix unveiled One of Us, a harrowing documentary about ex-Hasidic Jews. 'Although the inner workings of cloistered, fundamentalist communities have always been a source of pop-cultural curiosity, the past several years have seen an explosion in high-profile Haredi media,' says Berman. 'First came the mid-2010s raft of ex-Orthodox memoirs, from Leah Vincent’s Cut Me Loose to Elissa Altman’s Treyf. 'Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is so hot right now,' says Judy Berman.

The newly released reality show that follows Julia Haart, the chief executive of modeling mega-brand Elite World Group, less than a decade after she left a repressive ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, tells its unique story 'wrapped in the shiny, same-y packaging of a standard docusoap,' says Judy Berman.

Cut Me Loose by Leah Vincent