Fandorin: Episodes 1 to 3, of 6
Title: "Fandorin: Azazel"
Setting: Present day Russian Empire, which never fell
Location: Petrograd, the capital of the Russian Empire
Format: TV mini-series
Length: Six 47-minute-long episodes, with four aired so far. I watched three.
Language: Russian, so far
Release date: January, 2023
Availability: Streaming platforms
POD(s): 1917 (allegedly, but more on that below)
The length of this review: approximately 11 minutes of reading
"Fandorin" is a curious but often frustrating and amateurish TV mini-series, with an impressive pedigree.
A Bit of Background:
In the turbulent mid '90s Russia, Boris Akunin's wife came to him with a stray observation about books. She loved reading trashy detective novels, but was embarrassed to be seen reading them on the metro. She joked about putting fake classy black and white covers on her detective books to fool other people on the subway she was reading quality literature and lamented the state of native detective fiction. Akunin saw an opportunity. Russian literature does not do middle-brow and discourages such thinking. One either writes high-minded art or shovels low-brow trash to please the filthy masses. A third is not given. Akunin was intrigued by the challenge of writing a high-brow detective novel which is not afraid to entertain and delve into decidedly low-brow territory as well. Enter Fandorin.
Fandorin is a hero of a series of Akunin historical fiction detective novels, set in late 19th and early 20th century Russian Empire. Fandorin is an impoverished orphan of an ancient noble family, who in 1876 at the age of 20 is able to use his wits and his name to land a low-paying, low-ranking job at the newly created Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow police. There, he is assigned to a mundane case of a suicide, but discovers all is not as it appears and uncovers a nefarious plot involving international politics and far reaching conspiracies. The debut novel was an immediate hit.
Most of the Fandorin novels have been translated into English, and are a delight. Akunin immerses the reader into a world gone by, while telling a rollicking story. To keep things fresh, Akunin challenged himself by dedicating each novel to a different type of detective genre - a locked room mystery, silver fork high society tale, conspiracy, hunting a serial killer, and many others. The novels occur over a period of thirty years, and Fandorin ages and matures as he goes along his adventures, while staying true to his honest and honorable ways. The books and the style of writing have been compared by some English language reviewers to Thackeray and Caleb Carr. Thackeray I can see, but on his best day Caleb Carr cannot write as well as Akunin on his worst. Carr's writing is often mawkish and pointlessly dense as he wants to show you he has done the research, often at the expense of the pace of the novel. Akunin keeps things humming along, showing he has done the research where necessary but never bogging down the novel just to prove he visited the library.
Several adaptations of the novels have been made, for the Russian big screen and small, with various degrees of success. The first was the least ambitious, called "Azazel" (2002) and not entirely closely following the events of the first novel, with a clearly limited budget. In 2005, a much better adaptation of the "Turkish Gambit" (2005) was made as a film, and then re-edited into a TV-series with unaired and deleted footage hastily inserted (a common practice in Russia). Set during the Russo-Turkish War, it finds Fandorin as originally a Russian volunteer fighting with the Serbs, who finds a plot to destabilize Russian position even as he grows disillusioned by the conflict. It is a good read, and a decent watch, but it is a not a great representative of the overall type of a Fandorin novel, because it is a two-hander, pairing Fandorin up with a naïve but perky female college student who goes to the front to support her bland boyfriend and stumbles into the plot.
However, "Turkish Gambit" is "Citizen Kane" compared to the last big-budget adaptation of Fandorin's tales - "The State Councilor" (2005), in which Fandorin is relegated to second-tier status due to the film being hijacked by the massive ego of Nikita Mikhalkov, who takes over the film as a preening bad guy, eats up most of the screen time, overacts and gives you second-hand embarrassment at the clown antics. Made at the high point of Mikhalkov's prestige and powers, due to his close relationship with Putin, no one was able to rein him in and it shows. Allegedly, the film was a critical hit and its Wikipedia page boasts it got no negative reviews in Russia, and it is said to have made back its budget and more. And yet, no Fandorin film was made since, so draw your own conclusions, gentle reader.
The TV Mini-Series Announcement:
In late 2020, a mid-major Russian TV production company announced plans to make a TV mini-series about Fandorin, set in modern times. This was greeted with a bit of confusion, since Fandorin novels are historical detective fiction. The producers, anxious to stop criticism and eager to compare themselves to successful TV adaptation from the rotten West, cited BBC's "Sherlock" as their inspiration. But, this too, confused people. Sherlock Holmes had been placed in contemporary setting many, many times, and lends himself easily to it, because at its heart Sherlock is a detective story, which its author happen to set in Victorian London, because the author was living in Victorian London at the time. Sherlock tales are now historical fiction, but Holmes was a contemporary character in a contemporary setting, but just happened to have been published over a hundred years ago. Fandorin's tales were written in the late 1990s and deliberately set in the 1870s. They were always intended to be historical fiction. But, given the track record of Russian TV companies announcing projects which never come to fruition, not much more was made of this. Alas, there was one more twist in the story, and the reason I write about it on this fine Board.
Fandorin in AH Russia:
As the Fandorin show was being developed, a new title for it temporarily emerged: Empire. This was the first hint the show would be AH. And the rumor was confirmed by the producers, who kept most things under wraps for fear of blowback. So much so, they refused to name the actor who would be playing the lead character. Details sparsely emerged over the Summer and Fall of 2022, usually as one liners without any context. The show was to be set in a contemporary Russian Empire, because the Revolution of 1917 failed. This too raised questions, because as everyone reading this already knows, there were actually two revolutions in 1917, the February one, and the Bolshevik. The producers did not clarify, but later on stated the Bolsheviks failed. Having watched the show, I cannot tell you whether the February Revolution failed, succeeded or ever occurred. No details are given.
Much was made of the series taking place in Petrograd, for two reasons. The first, for AH nerdlingers such as us, it would indicate World War One had occurred, though once again, it was not made clear whether it had or had not happened, as there is no reference to Germany on the show, as near as I can tell. But the inclusion of Petrograd did make a few people annoyed as the whole point of the first novel is Fandorin fumbling about Moscow, which was then not the capital of the Russian Empire. Moscow in 1876 was for all intents a powerful but provincial town. Fandorin is in a relative backwater, which is why he is able to get a job in the police. Putting Fandorin in Petrograd, the clearly stated capital of the Russian Empire alters not only the plot but also requires some explanation as to how a young man with few connections can get to the glittering metropolis. This is also hand-waved in the series. Most of the casting news focused on secondary characters, some of whom did not exist in the Fandorin novels, due to the changed setting. Four in particular stood out, and indicated there would be shenanigans afoot.
Maxim Matveyev was cast as Tsar Nicholas III, the not-quite autocratic ruler of Russia, who was said to be a decent man overwhelmed by his role and who has tumbled into a not quite an affair with a singer with a dark secret. Matveyev, a leading man typically cast as the hunky love interest of a sweet gal in the big city, looked quite odd in the still photos provided of him in a silly uniform. In interviews released in the Fall of 2022, Matveyev revealed to make him appear more schlubby, the producers had given him a fake paunch and a balding wig. This is akin to hiring Channing Tatum and having him wear a fat suit. You admire the dedication to the silliness, even as you question the motives.
Stychkin was cast as Prime Minister Orlov, the head of the elected Russian government, though it was not clear what role the PM plays and where his powers end and the Tsar's begin. It would appear Russia is now a constitutional monarchy, but having watched four episodes I am still confused as to how it works, and the producers and the writers clearly do not care. The Tsar is in near total command of the armed forces, but just how absolute is his rule is never made clear. Still, much is made of the PM and the show lists him as one of eight main characters. So, maybe he has more to do in future episodes.
The PM taking a selfie with the Tsar.
Career character actor who specializes in playing unpleasant twerps Igor Chernevich was cast as the Tsar's uncle, and he is an unpleasant twerp, who is scheming and hates Orlov. Though the show is as yet to reveal whether the uncle or the PM are ultimately right in the very, very, very vague geopolitical advice they give the Tsar, with the PM arguing not engaging in the affairs of sovereign states in the Middle East, and the uncle being gung-ho to go guns blazing. Normally, in our degenerate hemisphere, the uncle would be the bad guy and the PM the voice of reason. But this is a Russian show, so it could turn out the PM was the bad guy all along and the Tsar should have listened to his uncle. Stay tuned.
Then came the weirdest piece of casting, a relative unknown was given the role of Victor Ulyanov, an activist-painter provocateur who leads a faction of street rebels. And if the name tugs at a memory, Ulyanov is the birth surname of Lenin, and the show spends an awkward scene explaining Victor is his great-grandson, though ITTL, Lenin fled to Argentina after 1917, where he is buried in a mausoleum.
…
No, no further details are given, but one of the Senators at a fancy dress party hits up (and hits upon) Fandorin by telling him these facts as a droll story to dump strange exposition that will not in any way impact the rest of the plot of the show. It is quite odd and it is never explained. We are just meant to hiss at Victor, because of his rabble rousing roots and because instead of being happy to be in the glorious, sprawling and stable, so very, very stable, Russian Empire, he goes out and vandalizes symbols of Tsarist authority with spray paint and leads misguided impressionable youth to follow him and his no-goodnik ideas. Naturally he is an easily manipulated dolt with high pretensions, because that is how you write any character who protests the government in any shape way or form in Russia.
As to the rest of the cast, it is a decidedly mixed bag, with some stunt casting done to get people talking. A comedy actress was cast just to participate in a bizarre scene in the first episode where she talks to Fandorin about a crime she witnessed from her bedroom window, while standing in the nude with a flute of champagne, and it is meant to be funny that Fandorin looks her only in the eyes. One reviewer called the scene degrading and another called it hooliganism, which is such a glorious Soviet word to describe a work of fiction, I shall be using it in the future. A government arppoved blogger was cast as a news-caster, and delivers her lines with the emotional range of a broken toaster oven. And as for Fandorin himself, the producers claimed to have searched high and low all over the country, but wouldn't you know it they hired a guy from a Moscow theater to which they have connections. He portrays Fandorin as a fumbling young man, which is only true for the first half of the novel which forms the basis for the TV series. However, while he tends to over-emote, he is not the worst thing in the series. By far the biggest miss was Fandorin's perfunctory love interest.
Mila Ershova is said to be popular, by her PR team, and has a legion of fans, per her site. She also cannot act and thinks hand wringing is emoting. I was stunned to learn she has theatrical background and further floored to learn she did a year-long course at the prestigious Moscow Art Academy Theatre, which has existed since 1898 and was founded by Stanislavski, as in Stanislavski-method Stanislavski. Furthermore, the course she took was taught by the late great Dmitriy Brusnikin, who is considered an actor's-actor. How someone could do that sort of high-level training and come off looking like an utter amateur is rather extraordinary. Imagine someone who had been Meryl Streep's understudy flailing her limbs about and talking like a six year old who misses her candy in a romantic comedy. Yes, that bad.
Having poo-pooed the acting, casting and the writing, I do wish to talk about what actually works for the show, despite the writing: the setting. The more I see of the Petrograd that never was, the more of it I wish to see, despite budget limitations. CGI'ed skyscrapers dominate the skyline of an imaginary city.
2023 Petrograd city center, as seen from the bow of an aqua-bus.
Russian policemen walk about with tablets which are connected by wi-fi to the Russian imperial databases and are able to seamlessly review security cam footage from around the city, because naturally a modern day Russian Empire would have CCTV everywhere. When investigating the apparent suicide of a student in St. Petersburg's Summer Garden (a real and gorgeous location which lends itself easily to cinematography), Fandorin is able to use multiple angles of security cameras to reconstruct the events, and scans the faces of people present. There is a charming boxy police-robot, which rides about on four wheels in the park, and which are sprinkled throughout the capital, able to cite citizens for petty crimes, warn of disorder and whose cameras are connected to central police database allowing policemen to review footage. Orwellian, yes, but ringing true all the same. And in a neat touch showing someone was paying attention to something, since the Revolution never occurred, the Russian alphabet was never altered by the Soviets. Thus, when young Fandorin texts with his perfunctory love interest, their texts are spelled out in old timey Russian with all the requisite hard-signs and archaic grammatical rules which made me smile. There is something curious about seeing a broadcast from the imperial Russian news network, featuring old-timey policeman interviewing modern attired civilians while a chyron in archaic language runs at the bottom of the screen.
The producers received permission to film in more than a few scenic St. Petersburg locations. In addition to the aforementioned Summer Garden, the palace intrigue scenes are filmed at the Tsar's Village on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and several official scenes with the Tsar announcing and rewarding his servants are set in gorgeous ballrooms from the era of Catherine the Great. And having seen what this show does with CGI, and having visited some of those ballrooms and hallways, I can tell you those scenes were shot on location and look gorgeous. Other neat details include a Russian DeLorean, and whoever designed Fandorin's suitably tiny apartment deserves a raise. The lingering shot of Fandorin wearily trooping to his apartment through a long, under-lit hallway dotted with doors to hundreds of identical shitty apartments is a nice touch. And, said apartment is logically located far from the city center of the capital of the Empire, forcing Fandorin to do a long commute to work (nice to see the Russian Empire and our CEOs hold similar views on tele-commuting in 2023). There is a monorail of course, because monorails are to Russian sci-fi what airships are to Western AH, but it being Petrograd, there are plenty of rivers, so Fandorin takes a boat-bus to and from his awful apartment, and then walks under the pylons holding up the track of said monorail, through an ill-kempt field of tall wild grass. Little things such as these point to care and thought, only to viciously undercut by someone casually saying Lenin is in a mausoleum in Argentina and it never being brought up again.
As to the plot? It meanders and is not worth discussing. As I said, the writing is weak, with repeated attempts at humor at the level of the recent Night Court reboot, with jokes landing flat, men in dresses equaling high comedy, and talking down to the audience, to make sure the distracted rube understands things. Thus, the current tsar is Nicholas III, because most Russians have heard of Tsar Nicholas II. The leader of the rabble rousers has to be someone related to Lenin (despite OTL Lenin having never fathered children). And so on. And yet, I am watching this show, because the visuals are rewarding. From episode two onwards, I was fast-forwarding through every single scene involving perfunctory love interest and Fandorin, and the domestic scenes involving the Tsar and his unhappy and horny wife. But, each time a monorail hove into view, or I caught a glimpse of a boat, I'd slow down. Heck, each time people texted, I'd pause and admire the juxtaposition of Russian letters not seen in ages on a smart phone screen, with people forming complete sentences using them. Whenever a new pompous official in an oddball uniform appeared, I'd pause to examine the medals and epaulets. The Russian DeLorean appears in a few scenes, but each time it does, I take note, though let's be clear, a car with gull wing doors would be a nightmare in Russia in general and in St. Petersburg in particular, because moisture (such as rain and snow) and gull wing doors equal a wet cabin. Even the clunky tablets and the cheap police-robots are fun. There is even a charmingly bizarre Minority Report inspired master-computer which can predict crimes before they occur based on, uh, something. But you have to take deep breaths when ArtHouse Lenin gifts his scar to a young woman to impress her (please don't ask) and be ready to hit the forward-ten-seconds button each time perfunctory love interest opens her mouth.
Only four episodes aired thus far, and it may all turn out awful (or even more awful) in the end, but for now, I am watching and I am amused, though probably for all the wrong reasons.
Thank you for reading.
Setting: Present day Russian Empire, which never fell
Location: Petrograd, the capital of the Russian Empire
Format: TV mini-series
Length: Six 47-minute-long episodes, with four aired so far. I watched three.
Language: Russian, so far
Release date: January, 2023
Availability: Streaming platforms
POD(s): 1917 (allegedly, but more on that below)
The length of this review: approximately 11 minutes of reading
"Fandorin" is a curious but often frustrating and amateurish TV mini-series, with an impressive pedigree.
A Bit of Background:
In the turbulent mid '90s Russia, Boris Akunin's wife came to him with a stray observation about books. She loved reading trashy detective novels, but was embarrassed to be seen reading them on the metro. She joked about putting fake classy black and white covers on her detective books to fool other people on the subway she was reading quality literature and lamented the state of native detective fiction. Akunin saw an opportunity. Russian literature does not do middle-brow and discourages such thinking. One either writes high-minded art or shovels low-brow trash to please the filthy masses. A third is not given. Akunin was intrigued by the challenge of writing a high-brow detective novel which is not afraid to entertain and delve into decidedly low-brow territory as well. Enter Fandorin.
Fandorin is a hero of a series of Akunin historical fiction detective novels, set in late 19th and early 20th century Russian Empire. Fandorin is an impoverished orphan of an ancient noble family, who in 1876 at the age of 20 is able to use his wits and his name to land a low-paying, low-ranking job at the newly created Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow police. There, he is assigned to a mundane case of a suicide, but discovers all is not as it appears and uncovers a nefarious plot involving international politics and far reaching conspiracies. The debut novel was an immediate hit.
Most of the Fandorin novels have been translated into English, and are a delight. Akunin immerses the reader into a world gone by, while telling a rollicking story. To keep things fresh, Akunin challenged himself by dedicating each novel to a different type of detective genre - a locked room mystery, silver fork high society tale, conspiracy, hunting a serial killer, and many others. The novels occur over a period of thirty years, and Fandorin ages and matures as he goes along his adventures, while staying true to his honest and honorable ways. The books and the style of writing have been compared by some English language reviewers to Thackeray and Caleb Carr. Thackeray I can see, but on his best day Caleb Carr cannot write as well as Akunin on his worst. Carr's writing is often mawkish and pointlessly dense as he wants to show you he has done the research, often at the expense of the pace of the novel. Akunin keeps things humming along, showing he has done the research where necessary but never bogging down the novel just to prove he visited the library.
Several adaptations of the novels have been made, for the Russian big screen and small, with various degrees of success. The first was the least ambitious, called "Azazel" (2002) and not entirely closely following the events of the first novel, with a clearly limited budget. In 2005, a much better adaptation of the "Turkish Gambit" (2005) was made as a film, and then re-edited into a TV-series with unaired and deleted footage hastily inserted (a common practice in Russia). Set during the Russo-Turkish War, it finds Fandorin as originally a Russian volunteer fighting with the Serbs, who finds a plot to destabilize Russian position even as he grows disillusioned by the conflict. It is a good read, and a decent watch, but it is a not a great representative of the overall type of a Fandorin novel, because it is a two-hander, pairing Fandorin up with a naïve but perky female college student who goes to the front to support her bland boyfriend and stumbles into the plot.
However, "Turkish Gambit" is "Citizen Kane" compared to the last big-budget adaptation of Fandorin's tales - "The State Councilor" (2005), in which Fandorin is relegated to second-tier status due to the film being hijacked by the massive ego of Nikita Mikhalkov, who takes over the film as a preening bad guy, eats up most of the screen time, overacts and gives you second-hand embarrassment at the clown antics. Made at the high point of Mikhalkov's prestige and powers, due to his close relationship with Putin, no one was able to rein him in and it shows. Allegedly, the film was a critical hit and its Wikipedia page boasts it got no negative reviews in Russia, and it is said to have made back its budget and more. And yet, no Fandorin film was made since, so draw your own conclusions, gentle reader.
The TV Mini-Series Announcement:
In late 2020, a mid-major Russian TV production company announced plans to make a TV mini-series about Fandorin, set in modern times. This was greeted with a bit of confusion, since Fandorin novels are historical detective fiction. The producers, anxious to stop criticism and eager to compare themselves to successful TV adaptation from the rotten West, cited BBC's "Sherlock" as their inspiration. But, this too, confused people. Sherlock Holmes had been placed in contemporary setting many, many times, and lends himself easily to it, because at its heart Sherlock is a detective story, which its author happen to set in Victorian London, because the author was living in Victorian London at the time. Sherlock tales are now historical fiction, but Holmes was a contemporary character in a contemporary setting, but just happened to have been published over a hundred years ago. Fandorin's tales were written in the late 1990s and deliberately set in the 1870s. They were always intended to be historical fiction. But, given the track record of Russian TV companies announcing projects which never come to fruition, not much more was made of this. Alas, there was one more twist in the story, and the reason I write about it on this fine Board.
Fandorin in AH Russia:
As the Fandorin show was being developed, a new title for it temporarily emerged: Empire. This was the first hint the show would be AH. And the rumor was confirmed by the producers, who kept most things under wraps for fear of blowback. So much so, they refused to name the actor who would be playing the lead character. Details sparsely emerged over the Summer and Fall of 2022, usually as one liners without any context. The show was to be set in a contemporary Russian Empire, because the Revolution of 1917 failed. This too raised questions, because as everyone reading this already knows, there were actually two revolutions in 1917, the February one, and the Bolshevik. The producers did not clarify, but later on stated the Bolsheviks failed. Having watched the show, I cannot tell you whether the February Revolution failed, succeeded or ever occurred. No details are given.
Much was made of the series taking place in Petrograd, for two reasons. The first, for AH nerdlingers such as us, it would indicate World War One had occurred, though once again, it was not made clear whether it had or had not happened, as there is no reference to Germany on the show, as near as I can tell. But the inclusion of Petrograd did make a few people annoyed as the whole point of the first novel is Fandorin fumbling about Moscow, which was then not the capital of the Russian Empire. Moscow in 1876 was for all intents a powerful but provincial town. Fandorin is in a relative backwater, which is why he is able to get a job in the police. Putting Fandorin in Petrograd, the clearly stated capital of the Russian Empire alters not only the plot but also requires some explanation as to how a young man with few connections can get to the glittering metropolis. This is also hand-waved in the series. Most of the casting news focused on secondary characters, some of whom did not exist in the Fandorin novels, due to the changed setting. Four in particular stood out, and indicated there would be shenanigans afoot.
Maxim Matveyev was cast as Tsar Nicholas III, the not-quite autocratic ruler of Russia, who was said to be a decent man overwhelmed by his role and who has tumbled into a not quite an affair with a singer with a dark secret. Matveyev, a leading man typically cast as the hunky love interest of a sweet gal in the big city, looked quite odd in the still photos provided of him in a silly uniform. In interviews released in the Fall of 2022, Matveyev revealed to make him appear more schlubby, the producers had given him a fake paunch and a balding wig. This is akin to hiring Channing Tatum and having him wear a fat suit. You admire the dedication to the silliness, even as you question the motives.
Stychkin was cast as Prime Minister Orlov, the head of the elected Russian government, though it was not clear what role the PM plays and where his powers end and the Tsar's begin. It would appear Russia is now a constitutional monarchy, but having watched four episodes I am still confused as to how it works, and the producers and the writers clearly do not care. The Tsar is in near total command of the armed forces, but just how absolute is his rule is never made clear. Still, much is made of the PM and the show lists him as one of eight main characters. So, maybe he has more to do in future episodes.
The PM taking a selfie with the Tsar.
Career character actor who specializes in playing unpleasant twerps Igor Chernevich was cast as the Tsar's uncle, and he is an unpleasant twerp, who is scheming and hates Orlov. Though the show is as yet to reveal whether the uncle or the PM are ultimately right in the very, very, very vague geopolitical advice they give the Tsar, with the PM arguing not engaging in the affairs of sovereign states in the Middle East, and the uncle being gung-ho to go guns blazing. Normally, in our degenerate hemisphere, the uncle would be the bad guy and the PM the voice of reason. But this is a Russian show, so it could turn out the PM was the bad guy all along and the Tsar should have listened to his uncle. Stay tuned.
Then came the weirdest piece of casting, a relative unknown was given the role of Victor Ulyanov, an activist-painter provocateur who leads a faction of street rebels. And if the name tugs at a memory, Ulyanov is the birth surname of Lenin, and the show spends an awkward scene explaining Victor is his great-grandson, though ITTL, Lenin fled to Argentina after 1917, where he is buried in a mausoleum.
…
No, no further details are given, but one of the Senators at a fancy dress party hits up (and hits upon) Fandorin by telling him these facts as a droll story to dump strange exposition that will not in any way impact the rest of the plot of the show. It is quite odd and it is never explained. We are just meant to hiss at Victor, because of his rabble rousing roots and because instead of being happy to be in the glorious, sprawling and stable, so very, very stable, Russian Empire, he goes out and vandalizes symbols of Tsarist authority with spray paint and leads misguided impressionable youth to follow him and his no-goodnik ideas. Naturally he is an easily manipulated dolt with high pretensions, because that is how you write any character who protests the government in any shape way or form in Russia.
As to the rest of the cast, it is a decidedly mixed bag, with some stunt casting done to get people talking. A comedy actress was cast just to participate in a bizarre scene in the first episode where she talks to Fandorin about a crime she witnessed from her bedroom window, while standing in the nude with a flute of champagne, and it is meant to be funny that Fandorin looks her only in the eyes. One reviewer called the scene degrading and another called it hooliganism, which is such a glorious Soviet word to describe a work of fiction, I shall be using it in the future. A government arppoved blogger was cast as a news-caster, and delivers her lines with the emotional range of a broken toaster oven. And as for Fandorin himself, the producers claimed to have searched high and low all over the country, but wouldn't you know it they hired a guy from a Moscow theater to which they have connections. He portrays Fandorin as a fumbling young man, which is only true for the first half of the novel which forms the basis for the TV series. However, while he tends to over-emote, he is not the worst thing in the series. By far the biggest miss was Fandorin's perfunctory love interest.
Mila Ershova is said to be popular, by her PR team, and has a legion of fans, per her site. She also cannot act and thinks hand wringing is emoting. I was stunned to learn she has theatrical background and further floored to learn she did a year-long course at the prestigious Moscow Art Academy Theatre, which has existed since 1898 and was founded by Stanislavski, as in Stanislavski-method Stanislavski. Furthermore, the course she took was taught by the late great Dmitriy Brusnikin, who is considered an actor's-actor. How someone could do that sort of high-level training and come off looking like an utter amateur is rather extraordinary. Imagine someone who had been Meryl Streep's understudy flailing her limbs about and talking like a six year old who misses her candy in a romantic comedy. Yes, that bad.
Having poo-pooed the acting, casting and the writing, I do wish to talk about what actually works for the show, despite the writing: the setting. The more I see of the Petrograd that never was, the more of it I wish to see, despite budget limitations. CGI'ed skyscrapers dominate the skyline of an imaginary city.
2023 Petrograd city center, as seen from the bow of an aqua-bus.
Russian policemen walk about with tablets which are connected by wi-fi to the Russian imperial databases and are able to seamlessly review security cam footage from around the city, because naturally a modern day Russian Empire would have CCTV everywhere. When investigating the apparent suicide of a student in St. Petersburg's Summer Garden (a real and gorgeous location which lends itself easily to cinematography), Fandorin is able to use multiple angles of security cameras to reconstruct the events, and scans the faces of people present. There is a charming boxy police-robot, which rides about on four wheels in the park, and which are sprinkled throughout the capital, able to cite citizens for petty crimes, warn of disorder and whose cameras are connected to central police database allowing policemen to review footage. Orwellian, yes, but ringing true all the same. And in a neat touch showing someone was paying attention to something, since the Revolution never occurred, the Russian alphabet was never altered by the Soviets. Thus, when young Fandorin texts with his perfunctory love interest, their texts are spelled out in old timey Russian with all the requisite hard-signs and archaic grammatical rules which made me smile. There is something curious about seeing a broadcast from the imperial Russian news network, featuring old-timey policeman interviewing modern attired civilians while a chyron in archaic language runs at the bottom of the screen.
The producers received permission to film in more than a few scenic St. Petersburg locations. In addition to the aforementioned Summer Garden, the palace intrigue scenes are filmed at the Tsar's Village on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and several official scenes with the Tsar announcing and rewarding his servants are set in gorgeous ballrooms from the era of Catherine the Great. And having seen what this show does with CGI, and having visited some of those ballrooms and hallways, I can tell you those scenes were shot on location and look gorgeous. Other neat details include a Russian DeLorean, and whoever designed Fandorin's suitably tiny apartment deserves a raise. The lingering shot of Fandorin wearily trooping to his apartment through a long, under-lit hallway dotted with doors to hundreds of identical shitty apartments is a nice touch. And, said apartment is logically located far from the city center of the capital of the Empire, forcing Fandorin to do a long commute to work (nice to see the Russian Empire and our CEOs hold similar views on tele-commuting in 2023). There is a monorail of course, because monorails are to Russian sci-fi what airships are to Western AH, but it being Petrograd, there are plenty of rivers, so Fandorin takes a boat-bus to and from his awful apartment, and then walks under the pylons holding up the track of said monorail, through an ill-kempt field of tall wild grass. Little things such as these point to care and thought, only to viciously undercut by someone casually saying Lenin is in a mausoleum in Argentina and it never being brought up again.
As to the plot? It meanders and is not worth discussing. As I said, the writing is weak, with repeated attempts at humor at the level of the recent Night Court reboot, with jokes landing flat, men in dresses equaling high comedy, and talking down to the audience, to make sure the distracted rube understands things. Thus, the current tsar is Nicholas III, because most Russians have heard of Tsar Nicholas II. The leader of the rabble rousers has to be someone related to Lenin (despite OTL Lenin having never fathered children). And so on. And yet, I am watching this show, because the visuals are rewarding. From episode two onwards, I was fast-forwarding through every single scene involving perfunctory love interest and Fandorin, and the domestic scenes involving the Tsar and his unhappy and horny wife. But, each time a monorail hove into view, or I caught a glimpse of a boat, I'd slow down. Heck, each time people texted, I'd pause and admire the juxtaposition of Russian letters not seen in ages on a smart phone screen, with people forming complete sentences using them. Whenever a new pompous official in an oddball uniform appeared, I'd pause to examine the medals and epaulets. The Russian DeLorean appears in a few scenes, but each time it does, I take note, though let's be clear, a car with gull wing doors would be a nightmare in Russia in general and in St. Petersburg in particular, because moisture (such as rain and snow) and gull wing doors equal a wet cabin. Even the clunky tablets and the cheap police-robots are fun. There is even a charmingly bizarre Minority Report inspired master-computer which can predict crimes before they occur based on, uh, something. But you have to take deep breaths when ArtHouse Lenin gifts his scar to a young woman to impress her (please don't ask) and be ready to hit the forward-ten-seconds button each time perfunctory love interest opens her mouth.
Only four episodes aired thus far, and it may all turn out awful (or even more awful) in the end, but for now, I am watching and I am amused, though probably for all the wrong reasons.
Thank you for reading.
