Not a Stranger Review
Director: Mert Baykal
Date Created: 2026-09-17 23:34
3.5
Not a Stranger Review: Directed by Mert Baykal and written by Tuğba Doğan, Netflix’s Turkish psychological thriller Seni Tanıyorum stars Elçin Sangu as Funda, Melis Sezen as Nazli, Ozan Dolunay as İlker, Cemal Hünal as Kemal and Efe Taşdelen as Emre, alongside Murat Garipağaoğlu, Mine Teber and Nergis Öztürk. The series runs for eight episodes, with each episode lasting around 40 to 50 minutes.
Not a Stranger Review
Netflix’s Not a Stranger revolves around Funda, who is an artist and stopped painting once she became a mother to Mavi. While loving her daughter, she is very desperate about coming back to the pre-motherhood stage of her life. She has no other choice but to listen to her husband İlker’s advise about hiring a nanny.
Funda finds herself unable to trust anybody in terms of taking care of her daughter until Nazli comes into her life. It appears that Nazli is just what Funda needs to look after Mavi while Funda has a chance to paint again. However, Nazli begins to play a more active role in the family than Funda originally expected. Moreover, the stranger things Funda notices around, the more difficult it becomes for her to understand whether it is reality or her inability to cope with the situation.
The thing that appealed to me the most in the Netflix Turkish series Not a Stranger was that the conflict faced by Funda was not initiated in the thriller. The conflict started with something more normal and, to be frank, something that I can actually relate to. Funda wanted to be a mother, but she also did not wish to be a mother to the extent that it would become her sole identity in life. In this series, we are presented with a real need of hers to paint once again rather than consider her profession to be secondary since she now has a child.
Elçin Sangu’s portrayal of Funda’s exhaustion is also quite effective. I really like the fact that she does not portray her as an extremely capable heroine in the thriller who instantly notices all the red flags. Funda makes mistakes, questions herself, and is prone to making emotional decisions. Guilt over having left her son Mavi with someone else becomes an increasingly vital factor in that case as it starts questioning her instincts. If something unusual is going on, there is always another possible explanation. Maybe Nazli has something to hide. Maybe İlker is not being entirely honest with her. Maybe Funda is just exhausted.
Turkish series Not a Stranger gets a little more interesting with the role that Melis Sezen plays does not need to be portrayed as a villain from the very moment she steps into the room. It is rather because of the role that she plays as a nanny that she becomes so scary. She has access to Mavi, the house and even the life of the family. This is scarier than just making the character of Nazli a villain.
Another thing I enjoyed was how Nazli’s connection with Mavi brings up new dimensions to the story. It is not just a matter of Nazli being a caretaker doing her job well. The more Nazli’s background is revealed, the more her motivations for joining the family take on a new significance regarding previous events. The best parts of this series are those where we are made to rethink our understanding of Nazli rather than given new questions.
Nevertheless, I would argue that this is where the problems with the series start to become visible. In my opinion, in some episodes the series overplays the uncertainty regarding the condition of Funda both physically and mentally. On the one hand, such an approach works, since Funda is already tired and vulnerable at the time; on the other hand, constant doubt about her ability to perceive things correctly gradually becomes rather predictable.
Another instance where this happens is in Ilker’s storyline. Already there are problems within his family, and the lies that he tells make things even worse. The fact that he used to date Nazli takes on significance for the story, especially since Funda doesn’t know the whole truth at first. I thought that this was an excellent addition to the overall theme of trust in the story, but at the same time it was a little rushed emotionally speaking in terms of how these issues were explored.
The case of Emre is also equally significant in the way that it allows for the further widening of the mystery, not just from Funda’s point of view but by bringing another dimension into the mix of the plot of Not a Stranger. Emre’s connections to both Nazli and İlker add another puzzle piece in this family drama, while his efforts to contact Funda increase the feeling that there is definitely something going on.
Netflix series Not a Stranger becomes a much more coherent and consistent TV show because the various puzzles now all start to fit into one whole narrative and become one story rather than several separate cases. However, the series still manages to hold on to the main theme – the problem of the mother being torn between her love for her kids and her need for identity outside of her children.
Netflix Not a Stranger Review: Summing Up
Overall, the 2026 series Not a Stranger is a decent psychological thriller with an emotional concept underneath the surface. This is highlighted by the performances of Elçin Sangu, Melis Sezen’s Nazli, and its storyline that builds on the theme of the nanny to ask many more things beyond that of motherhood, identity, and trust. There are times when the show does not do it right, but when it does, it makes for a compelling series.
