Four Russian TV shows I tried this year:
Миля 📺 2024 comedy, one season
Two Gen-Z girls become PR managers to Mila, a prostitute turned social media influencer. I gave up by the end of the second episode.
Два холма 📺 2022-2025 sci-fi comedy, three seasons
The premise of this show sounded intriguing: women live in a utopia along with a select few highly-prized men... let's call them Group A. All other men (Group B) struggle to survive outside the walls of the utopia. One young man from Group B manages to infiltrate Group A and start living the high life. I made it through 3 episodes, but the jokes were too crude for me. Seems to be a popular show though!
Mаша, давай! 📺 2022 dating documentary, one season
This one I watched in its entirety, all 5 episodes. Masha is a popular 30-something sex blogger/journalist who decided to secretly film a bunch of dates in different Russian cities. She also meets with groups of her (female) followers in each city to discuss characteristics of local men.
The pros: it's a decent show for learning Russian. I think first date shows are always good for language learners because there's a mix of small talk (like Кем ты работаешь?) and more advanced topics.
Also, you get to see 5 different cities 🤩 Moscow, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, Perm, and Yekaterinburg. Masha definitely put effort into finding good locations for filming. Sometimes the date takes place in an interesting restaurant, sometimes in a tourist hotspot. The coolest date was in Perm, aboard a "romantic трамвай-кафе" that drove around the city. 🚊💕
The cons: Because her dates didn't know they were being recorded and thus weren't miked up, it was often hard to hear their voices. Captions would have been super helpful. And while it was interesting to hear men speaking off the record, at times I felt a little uncomfortable watching. It was simply eavesdropping on some guy who might be feeling nervous on a first date. Plus, at times Masha tried to shock or provoke the men, probably to get more dramatic footage for the show. And she laughed a lot. A LOT. Like all the time. One guy asked her right away if she was drunk. Her laughing seemed like a defense mechanism and imho detracted from the show.
Жить жизнь 📺 2022-2024 drama, two seasons
This was the reason I watched the other shows, because I couldn't find Жить жизнь anywhere for free and had to get a subscription to watch it, which then meant access to all the shows. I had seen a trailer for this series on YouTube and was enthralled. But in reality 🙈 ugh. It was painful. The story centers around a beautiful-but-traumatized young woman who meets a beautiful-yet-untrustworthy young surgeon. Is he a good boyfriend or just another бабник? And how will she work through all the trauma from her last relationship? I watched all 8 episodes but very, very reluctantly by the end. The language was advanced and so I definitely missed important plot points, which is on me. But moreover, everyone - no matter how old they were! - acted like they were 16 and in love for the first time. This show felt like teenage fan fiction about adult lives.
What Russian TV shows have you tried this year?
