Letters from the Past Review 2025 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
Elif Ayar (Günes Sensoy) has been taking care of her mother Fatma (Ipek Türktan) as her cognitive skills go into steep decline. One of the things Elif finds as she packs up and goes through her mother’s belongings is a journal full of highlighted reminders, as well as a red envelope addressed to Elif herself. In that envelope is an ultrasound photo and a plea for forgiveness from a teenager who turns out to be Elif’s birth mother.
Of course, this comes as a shock, as Elif has always known Fatma to be her mother. As Fatma sinks into a coma, though, Elif is determined to figure out who her birth parents are.
We flash back to 2003, at a high school in Istanbul where Fatma is a well-regarded literature teacher. Her memory is already failing her, as she has to write reminders to herself in a journal. She gives her class an assignment to write letters to someone in the future, but for the six members of her Literature Club — Mert (Can Bartu Arslan), Murat (Kerem Alp Kabul), Zuhal (Deniz Bakacak), Banu (Nilufer Bayraktutan), Seda (Cagil Aydiner) and Ahmet (Berk Ozgur) — they have to write the letters to themselves or they fail the assignment.
There are a lot of entanglements with this group. They seem to be friends, but most of them make fun of Banu for her weight. Murat is besties with Banu but likes Zuhal, who seems to like Mert. Banu also likes Mert. Seda teases Ahmet, and is besties with Banu, as well. She’s also throwing up a lot and implies that she might be pregnant.
Meanwhile, Elif goes back to her mother’s old school to see if she can figure out who was in her class. There, she meets the grown-up Zuhal (Gokce Bahadir), there to get an award. Helping to organize the presentation is Badu (Selin Yeninci), the wife of a wealthy benefactor. Murat (Erdem Senocak) works for Badu as her driver.
To say that all the relationships and entanglements in Letters From The Past are confusing is an understatement. It doesn’t help that two of the boys — Mert and Murat — have similar names. What we couldn’t discern while we were watching the first episode is if the show is a teen drama, a drama about a young woman trying to figure out who she is, or something inbtween.
So with this whole Gordian Knot of relationships in place among a group of teens who seem to barely like each other but get together like they’re all best friends, Elif is going to have to navigate all of this 20 years later to find out exactly who her birth parents are. It makes us wonder why the story of Elif’s quest to find out the truth is being wrapped up in all of this aughties teen drama.
In fact, the story we really want to see is how Fatma started losing her cognitive faculties at a relatively young age, creatively covered up for it, and how she became Elif’s mother. How did she manage to raise Elif for twenty years while her memory was failing her? Did she ever try to get in touch with the former student who was Elif’s birth mother? It’s strange how the connection between the two time periods is Fatma, but after a couple of scenes in 2003 we don’t even see her.
What gives us pause is the lack of cohesion between the time periods, and how the letters conceit fits into the narrative. To be honest, we felt like we were watching two distinct shows during the first episode, with neither of them giving us a story that we were satisfied with.
