The Russian serial industry is increasingly turning to Turkey

Romcom in Istanbul and local version of “Knock on My Door”

In Turkey, you can not only relax, but also shoot TV shows. And in conditions when European film sets for our projects have become difficult to access, and the prospect of cooperation with the Western film industry looks like a utopia, the Turkish direction seems very promising. Right now, two Russian series closely connected with Turkey are in the works.

The Turkish trace in our serial industry appeared a few years ago. The success of the joint series “East-West” and “The Sultan of My Heart” marked the demand for exotic melodramas with immersion in history. Janissary was an exclusively Russian project, but it was filmed in Turkey, and as a result, local actors also appeared in the frame. The favorite vacation spot of Russians probably does not claim to be a key country on the world cinema map, however, oriental passions have already become so understandable and interesting to our public that producers seem to have no doubts about whether they will watch the subject or not.

Right now in Istanbul they are looking for love, or rather they are filming in a series with such a plot, three Russian actresses: Katerina Kovalchuk (“Hussar”), Tasha Tsvetkova (“YUZZZ”), Anna Bogomolova (“Last Minister”). They play the main roles in the project, the scenario line of which looks amazingly plausible. The girl met a sultry Turkish macho on social networks, goes to meet him, just in case, taking two friends as escorts. Naturally, the Turk turned out to be not quite what he perceived on the computer screen, and the girls begin international adventures.

It seems to be an ordinary melodrama with an oriental flavor and is also conceived as a nostalgic attraction. The series will be stylistically reminiscent of early 2000s rom-coms like The Proposal or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. Interest in a genre that is not the most popular now can be called very timely. The carefree atmosphere of the 2000s has every chance of becoming a warm blanket to hide from terrible news.

Meanwhile, filming began in Moscow on the Russian version of the Turkish serial hit Knock on My Door. The original series was released in 2020, it was shown in forty countries, where the project made a lot of noise among those who love melodramas, consisting of more than fifty episodes. Probably the story of a student in search of a grant and a businessman who is ready to allocate this grant, but with the condition that the girl will play the role of his bride for some time, is more dynamic than Brazilian soap operas, but certainly takes into account the interests of those who love to shed tears and laugh without too much fuss.

The script of the Russian version was written taking into account the difference in mentalities, but the storylines and main characters are preserved, although they are sometimes worked out more than the original ones. The cast of the project is very reluctantly disclosed. The names of the performers of the main roles are still kept secret (there were unconfirmed rumors that Konstantin Kryukov was one of the contenders for the central male image) and only those who will play important supporting characters are known.

The most famous so far are Anna Nevskaya, who will appear in the image of the main character’s aunt, and Maxim Belborodov, who received the role of the main villain. Other project participants include Alexandra Tulinova, Yulia Serina and Ekaterina Shumakova, as well as singer Vlad Sokolovsky.

There are quite a lot of adaptations of European and American series on the Russian serial market, but Turkish plots were not reworked very often. Of the most popular, we can recall the series “On Your Side” (based on “Black and White Love”), “Mother’s Choice” (based on the Turkish hit “My Mom”), “Test” (based on “Meryem”). As events unfold, the Knock on My Door adaptation is conceived as quite ambitious against the backdrop of other reworks. However, forecasts in the local serial industry are somewhat akin to astrological ones.