The series “Awakening” was called too difficult for TV

After the actively discussed premiere on streaming, the Awakening series moved to television screens, and viewers have already noted that it is not so easy to watch such a project on the air. MK tried to compose its own spectator experience.

Over the years of working with foreign sources (Awakening – an adaptation of the American TV series in 2012), local directors and producers have gained considerable experience. After dozens of projects, they apparently realized that the visual gloss of Western products is still reproduced with great difficulty. But in the ability to raise the psychological drama to another level, ours cannot be denied.

A very illustrative example is the TV series “Your Honor” with Oleg Menshikov. A lively but rather sketchy American project about a corrupt judge in the Russian interpretation turned out to be a drama overflowing with passions about crime and punishment. In Awakening, the protagonist has a lot of suffering, and in this part we can really give odds to anyone.

In the center of the plot is the investigator Pavel Frolov (Evgeny Mironov), obviously obsessed with work. At the beginning of the action, he actually removes the family from boarding the plane, because the vacation was suddenly prevented by production circumstances.

On the way to the city, an accident occurs and, having regained consciousness, Frolov realizes that he is in two realities. He spends one day with his wife (Natalya Vdovina), heartbroken and blaming her husband for the death of her only son (Mikhail Shvedov). The next morning, the investigator wakes up in an apartment where there is a surviving son, embittered at his father for the death of his mother.

Living both realities, the investigator, nevertheless, goes to work, where he also has to play a double game. One day he devotes to the investigation in the company of his longtime partner Pushkin (Alexander Robak), the other to the capture of villains with the trainee Novikov (Ruslan German). In an attempt to figure out where the dream is and where the reality is, Frolov resorts to the help of his old friend Sanych (Vladimir Ilyin), and on the day when Sanych, like everyone else, dissolves, he talks with the psychologist Vera (Yana Sexte).

The script trick is that each episode is devoted to a separate investigation, therefore, family scenes with a wife and son, conversations with two psychologists, as well as two criminal cases, which, of course, intersect with each other by characters and evidence, must fit into one episode. Everyone who has taken the trouble to follow such a wave of people and events, as a rule, agrees that each series turns into a very exciting attraction. But, of course, it does not do without remarks in the spirit of “brains are boiling, it would be better to watch the beginning, and then immediately the end.”

And the audience boiling with brains can be understood. Awakening is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how a series originally created for streaming can be different from a broadcast production. Everything is not only more frank, but also faster. It is hardly necessary to call the pace and density of action directly cosmic, however, such series suggest a change in attitude towards television. In this case, it is not the source of the background image and sound, but an object that attracts close attention to itself.

If you watch “Awakening” with due attention, then, in addition to dashing plot twists, you can also notice the stamps of the investigation genre that are very typical for our series. Investigators in our country are invented like a blueprint, at least in terms of working methods and manner of speaking. It is unlikely that the main characters of the series got the replicas of a dream, however, what is important here is what they say and who does it. With the actors, everything turned out better than with the dialogues.

Probably, “Awakening could be a benefit performance for Yevgeny Mironov, who conveyed to the envy of many colleagues the emotions of a man who almost fell into the abyss of madness, but somehow still holds on. However, his colleagues on the set also keep their mark, and as a result, even small episodes are filled with memorable acting performances.

Perhaps Alexander Robak is already capable of playing investigators from memory, given the abundance of such roles in his career, but this does not remove from him the title of an almost ideal security officer with a catch. Yana Sexte and Vladimir Ilyin may not look like stereotypical psychologists, but they are very good in the roles of characters who are about to dissolve like a dream. Natalya Vdovina and Agrippina Steklova, who played the wife and boss of the protagonist, are laconic, but even in their silence emotions boil.

As a result, we got a very strong cocktail, the strength of which is not yet familiar to the average series. However, if you want water, then there is still a lot of it on the evening air.