Lamb social networks – Newspaper Kommersant No. 11 (7456) of 01/23/2023

Kinopoisk started showing the series Fandorin. Azazel” – a new version of the adventures of the famous detective, based on the novel by Boris Akunin. About the impressions of the first two episodes tells Yulia Shagelman.

Unlike previous adaptations of Akunin’s popular works (mini-series “Azazel” in 2002, the films “Turkish Gambit” and “State Councilor” in 2005, the series “Pelagia and the White Bulldog”, 2009), carefully, as far as budgets allowed, reproduced on screen, the Russia we’ve lost, the new show takes characters and audiences to a Russia we never found. Neither the October Revolution happened here, nor, judging by the fact that one of the Petrograd streets bears the name of Emperor Hirohito, the Second World War. In 2023, Russia remains an empire ruled by Tsar Nicholas III (Maxim Matveev) of the Romanov dynasty. There is also Prime Minister Orlov (Yevgeny Stychkin), however, the details of the state structure are vague. In the second episode, the tsar, his uncle Mikhail Romanov (Igor Chernevich), who serves as the minister of defense, and the prime minister are negotiating with an unnamed country in the Middle East for help in fighting the rebels, with Orlov insisting on a humanitarian mission, and the uncle of the emperor – on a military operation. Nikolay, like his namesake from the beginning of the 20th century, is weak-willed, indecisive and generally wants to be left behind with this policy. True, you cannot call him a good family man, unlike his ancestor, because he is one of the hopelessly in love fans of the singer Amalia (Milena Radulovic) – the local femme fatale, and with his wife, a princess from Sweden (Urszula Malka), he has a tense relationship .

The place of action of the series instead of Moscow from the original source is the capital of the empire – Petrograd, which is a fusion of the present and the candy-baranka past. Here they write with yats and ers, students wear uniforms, palaces that have never been divided into communal apartments belong to aristocratic families, but young people hang out in social networks (the most popular is Portrait), skyscrapers rise on the horizon, a young employee of the detective department Erast Fandorin (Vladislav Tiron) lives in a depressing-futuristic complex of capsule apartments, and city robots equipped with a facial recognition system drive through the streets. “The age of social networks is the age of total control,” explains Brilling (Sergey Goroshko), a special assignment officer of the Third Division, who led the investigation into a series of mysterious suicides. He is also trying to introduce the Mobius artificial intelligence program into police practice, which is capable of predicting crimes before they are committed. It turns out such a light cyberpunk with a Russian accent, or a kind of “Island of Crimea” in Petrograd: the benefits and disadvantages of the capitalist civilization of consumption in the assortment, but at the same time everything is own, dear. And judging by the reaction of others to Fandorin in a dress that he is forced to wear in order to get into Amalia’s party, the spiritual bonds in this alternative Russia have also survived, and gender fluidity is not welcomed, as in real reality.

All this surroundings, perhaps, is the most interesting component of the series so far (after all, the dreamed-up nostalgia for the beautiful Russia of the past with noble investigators and beautiful ladies in trouble was in many ways the key to success for the books as well). The detective line moves forward slowly and more or less in accordance with the original source. She does not present big surprises, except for the appearance as one of the defendants in the complicated case of the performance artist Viktor Ulyanov (Evgeny Serzin), the great-grandson of the very Ulyanov who, after the failed coup, fled to Argentina, where a mausoleum was erected for him.

It all starts with the death of the wealthy major Kokorin (Grigory Vernik), which looks like an independent suicide, but the shrewd beyond his years Fandorin, encouraged by his mentor, veteran detective work Xavier Feofilaktovich Grushin (Alexander Semchev), recognizes the murder. It is followed by another, a white-eyed hired killer with the call sign “Azazel” enters the scene, the number of suspects grows, and instead of the cozy Grushin, the sharp but brilliant Brilling becomes the chief of the novice detective. In parallel, Fandorin’s timid romance develops with another heiress of a wealthy titled family, Lisa (Mila Ershova), who is assigned a slightly more active role in the series than in the novel, though Erast himself, by contrast, began to look a little more stupid. It is difficult to judge from two episodes how important the “war of towers” ​​at court will be for the further development of the plot, and what Ulyanov has to do with it. But, unlike several previous original projects of Kinopoisk, there is a desire to find out by turning on the next series – and this is already progress.