An Iranian man selects a contraband pirated DVD of the American television series Lost in Tehran.

Atta Kenare / AFP / Getty

Back before protests erupted last June, if you were to see a crowd gathered on the street in Tehran, odds were they were buying up the latest U.S. hit movie or TV show from a black market vendor. Customers flip through piles of plastic sleeves, looking for an unseen classic or the latest that the Americans have to offer: Avatar; District 9; Night at the Museum, Part Two; The Godfather, Part One; Invictus. One can find Desperate Housewives and 24. At about one toman each (approximately $1) DVDs are affordable as an occasional indulgence for most residents of the capital (even if a copy of Reservoir Dogs could well turn out to be Hancock; or The Blind Side recorded by a hand-held camera in a movie theater.) Residents of the capital, however, are willing to shell out the hefty sum of 30 to 50 toman for the hottest bootleg U.S. television series in Iran: Lost. (Comment on this story)

For the past two years, Lost has absolutely dominated the underground DVD market in Tehran; and almost nowhere in the world is the sixth and final season of Lost as anticipated than in Iran. Initially discovered in October 2008 by a few Iranians with access to high-speed internet, the show on DVD has now become Tehran’s “gotta have it” item. (Certainly, nothing compares to it on Iranian state television with its cooking shows and documentaries.) Today it is next to impossible to find a young person in the capital, be it in the affluent north of the city or in the working class south, that has not seen or at least heard of Lost. In some quarters, not knowing what Lost is, or worse, betraying a lack of interest in the program, invites scorn and ridicule. (See the top 10 episodes of Lost so far.)

For expatriate Iranians, it’s double-jeopardy. I arrived in Iran in early 2009, still mired in the wilds of Season Two, which ended some three years earlier. My cousins berated me mercilessly. “What, you don’t know about Jughead? Tricia Tanaka or the Man from Tallahassee?” And this is from people who follow the series’ dialogue by way of subtitles (all bootleg fare is subtitled by college students pursuing degrees in English, toiling away in anonymity). For my cousins, it was inconceivable that someone living in America, with direct access to the show at its source, would not be up-to-date on what was happening on the island.

The tropical island setting is an important part of the show’s appeal. “People here tend to live in their own fantasies or any world but the real one,” says Ghazaleh, a young graduate student from Northern Tehran. If escape is not possible, as appears to be the case for Jack, Hurley, and Kate, then at least our trapped heroes can live in paradise, even if a smoke monster or the occasional polar bear threatens their existence. “If this story had taken place in Siberia then nobody would have watched,” says Masoud, a 28-year old engineer from Tehran. The point is for the viewer to be able to escape, even if the characters cannot. “Today an Iranian says to himself, ‘I’ve got internet, I’ve got satellite, I’ve got money, but I don’t have freedom. So at least I’ll take pleasure in this world and live in a manner that is good and not in the manner that the clerics say.’”

Could the show be a paradigm for the country’s general, if not pathological, sense of social and political captivity? The closest rival Lost has had in Iran was Prison Break, a television series that had only a moderate following in the U.S. Before that, there was Jewel in the Castle, a melodrama from South Korea about a young girl working as an indentured cook in the royal kitchen of an ancient monarch, and who manages to free herself after a lifetime of struggle. But Lost and its mysteries have managed to appeal even more strongly to Iranians. “In Iran people are drawn to stories that are unpredictable,” observes Masoud. Sometimes to excess.� It is not unheard of for Iranian fans to go off on Lost benders lasting weeks at a time.

Perhaps it’s just good family entertainment. The final secret to Lost‘s success in the Islamic Republic is that it’s family-friendly. Unlike the U.S., the television in Iran tends to be in its own room, away from the dinner table. Families generally sit together to watch shows — veritable home cinemas. (Iranians are notorious film buffs, their love affair with movies stretching back to the birth of cinema itself. The first films were brought to Iran in 1900 by the monarch Mozaffar al-Din Shah, just five years after the Lumière brothers premiered their light machine in Paris.) In order for a film or television series to truly achieve cult status it has to be viewable by all members of the household. A great drama and entertainment for the grownups, Lost is also just sexy enough to keep the 14-year old boy in the room happy but not so risque that he’ll die from embarrassment because his mom is sitting next to him. (Read about watching Lord of the Rings in Tehran.)

Lost originally came out in a time in Iran when watching a show at home with family and friends was more exciting than anything going on outside. The 2009 presidential elections and subsequent rise of the opposition Green Movement changed all of that. Nonetheless, innumerable Iranians will see the final season of Lost through to the end. “People are very excited about season 6. They have waited long enough for it,” according to Ghazaleh. The executive producers of Lost have already promised viewers that not every single mystery will be answered in the final season. It remains an open question whether the various plot points of Lost will be resolved before the current political situation in Iran.

Source: TIME