‘Letters from the Past’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - An Unconvincing Drama

Five students write letters to their future self, which are scheduled to be sent twenty years later. It's an assignment — one that's forced on them. This doesn't mean they take it as punishment. These teenage students, with their raging hormones and amorous crushes, jot down their innermost thoughts, their secret desires, onto the paper. Things that they are unable to say to each other or even themselves find their way into the letter. Not everybody expresses themselves through words, however. One of the students, Zuhal (Deniz Bakacak), draws an incomplete house because her familial life is almost non-existent. Her brother, Levent, works at the school canteen and is also a drug dealer. This means Zuhal is ashamed of him and doesn't let anybody find out that they are related to each other. Later, through one of the characters, we learn that Zuhal had, for a long time, managed to present herself as a member of an affluent class. She likes to carefully curate her public persona; she is a seller of facades. It's only natural, then, that as an adult, she ends up becoming a social media influencer. Zuhal (Gökçe Bahadır) gets fame and followers. Family, though, continues to elude her. 

Another student named Banu (Nilüfer Bayraktutan) is constantly fat-shamed. Mert (Can Bartu Arslan) mostly looks sullen and plays basketball. Murat (Kerem Alp Kabul) has a rich dad, so he often says lines like, "My father has connections. My father will handle the situation." Finally, there is Seda (Çagil Aydiner) who...well, she does drugs. Since they are young and sentimental, they, either casually or romantically, get involved with each other. Banu, for instance, has a crush on Mert, and, at a costume party, she makes out with Murat (sort of like a one-night stand). A similar pattern can be seen with other friends, which is why I often found myself confused about who hooks up with whom throughout the show. I felt puzzled whenever someone started kissing or showing interest in someone else, because I thought that person was already in a relationship with another character. Additionally, I was not terribly interested in the romance and the various hookups. The characters barely have any depth beyond the one-line description I provided above. Banu is defined by the exhausting fat-shaming comments. Mert is defined by his love for basketball. Zuhal keeps pampering herself, while Seda just goes through the motions. And, of course, Murat has "rich guy problems" like who is stealing the tags from his shirt! As adults, everybody wears a solemn, dignified expression, except for Zuhal. She still prefers being the center of attention.

Created by Rana Denizer, Letters from the Past/Gelecege Mektuplar fails on multiple levels. It's a mess — everything feels scattered. The show left me with a lot of empty noise. Nothing ever seemed significant, dramatic, or urgent. Though the series brings the past into contact with the present in an attempt to evoke buried emotions, it surprisingly lacks warmth or bittersweet nostalgia. When the adult characters read the letters they wrote as young students, they smile and tear up, but what do they think about their younger self? What regrets do they have? The adult Murat (Erdem Şenocak) ends up becoming Banu's (Selin Yeninci) driver. Does he look at the letter and recall the ambitions he once had as a student? Does he wish to apologize to that past version of himself? The same can be said about other characters. Then again, the young characters spend so much time gossiping and pining for their crushes that they don't really seem to have solid ambitions. Yes, Mert wants to be a basketball player, but this is also included to advance the plot through a drug test incident. The characters on the screen are not flesh-and-blood humans. They are puppets. 

From that scene in Episode 1, which unfolds in the school cafeteria, Letters from the Past feels awkward, clumsy, and haphazard. The students' interactions—fighting one moment and becoming best friends the next—are so random that it's hard to understand why they hang out together. This erratic behavior leaves you questioning the very foundation of their friendship—are they allies who secretly harbor resentment, or are they merely thrown together by the demands of their teacher, Fatma Ayar (played by Ipek Türktan), who insists they write letters as a part of their assignment? Speaking of her, she doesn't seem to be a major, critical part of the students' lives. At least, not as much as the show presents her to be, which is why the whole drama on which the story rests (the handover of a baby) almost immediately collapses. It just looks like a flimsy, unconvincing excuse to propel the plot forward. If I had a time machine, I would go back to July 23, 2005, to write a letter to my future self, warning him to take a holiday 20 years later. Letters from the Past is not worth ruining your present. 

Final Score- [1.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times