Midnight at the Pera Palace

Midnight at the Pera Palace
Turkish	Pera Palas'ta Gece Yarısı
Genre	Period drama
Based on	Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King
Written by	Elif Usman
Directed by	Emre Şahin Nisa Dağ
Starring	Hazal Kaya Tansu Biçer Selahattin Paşalı James Chalmers
Country of origin	Turkey
Original language	Turkish
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	16
Production
Production companies	Netflix Karga Seven Pictures
Original release
Network	Netflix
Release	3 March 2022 (2022-03-03)

Midnight at the Pera Palace (Turkish: Pera Palas'ta Gece Yarısı), is a Turkish time travel historical drama television series directed by Emre Şahin starring Hazal Kaya, Tansu Biçer, Selahattin Paşalı and James Chalmers. The show was released on Netflix on March 3, 2022, with the first season consisting of 8 episodes. Centered around the real-life Pera Palace Hotel, the series was inspired by the 2014 historical non-fiction book Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King. The series was renewed for a second season, which aired on September 12, 2024.

Premise

Esra, a young orphaned journalist in modern-day Istanbul, is assigned to write an article about the upcoming 130th anniversary of the Pera Palace Hotel. At the hotel, she meets its manager, Ahmet, who shows her around and explains the history of the Pera Palace and some of its famous guests. Esra is particularly intrigued by the story of Peride, a young woman who apparently saved Mustafa Kemal from an assassination plot orchestrated by the British in 1919, during the occupation of Istanbul.

What Ahmet conceals from her is that, in combination with a mysterious key, one of the hotel's rooms becomes a time-travelling portal. That night, Esra accidentally time travels back to 1919, where she is soon mistaken for her apparent doppelgänger, Peride. Her encounters with men such as George, a scheming British officer, Halit, an enigmatic nightclub owner, and Reşat, a police officer in love with Peride leave her struggling to know whom to trust. Together with Ahmet, however, she must find a way to stop the assassination attempt on Mustafa Kemal and preserve the course of Turkey's independence.

Cast and characters

• Hazal Kaya as Esra/Peride
• Tansu Biçer as Ahmet
• Selahattin Paşalı as Halit
• Engin Hepileri as Reşat
• Hakan Dinçkol as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
• Yasemin Szawlowski as Sonia
• James Chalmers as George
• Ahmet Varlı as Dimitri
• Nergis Öztürk as Eleni
• Osman Albayrak as Naim Efendi
• Ergün Metin as Fahrettin
• Clare Louise Frost as Agatha Christie

External links

• Midnight at the Pera Palace at IMDb