Moscow’s addition to the C.S.I crime subgenre is predictable but with a charm of its own.
Eleven year old Moscow based television drama company Epic Media have gifted us with a number of their shows free of charge and with English subtitles on YouTube.
This treasure trove includes Flint (a sort of Russian update on Rambo: First Blood), Sky Court (an afterlife based fantasy parable), Department (serpentine infighting within a crime busting agency) and, from 2015, Akademia, a crime investigation drama.
There exist three of the series each consisting of twenty 45 minute episodes and it is a rare pleasure to be able to gorge on these in translation and without interruptions from someone peddling Old Granny’s Smetana.
Well-worn path.
Directed by Vyacheslav Lavrov (of the freakish Zen Drive of 2006) Akademia introduces a glamorous cast of up-and-coming faces. Galina Sumina (who appeared in the virtual reality thriller Censor of 2017), the old television hand Alexander Yatso (starring in Angelina at the moment) and Alexander Konstantinov (from the film 2010 Vroslaya doch ili Test Na) are but some of them.
To label Akademia a `C.S.I Moscow` would be to condemn it with too much haste, and yet it does adopt the template from a certain influential and iconic production. Of equal significance though is the precedent of Freud’s Method which the programme mirrors to a notable extent.
Sunny Moscow.
Contemporary Moscow is where the action takes place and we are reminded of this fact by repetitive outside shots of the capital in summery weather. The cast, donned in casual chic, are all model material and their office space and laboratory is up-to-date and spic and span. In short, this is Russia’s biggest city as you do not often see it.
Friends.
Anastasia Zorina (Sumina), a member of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation becomes involved in a complex homicide case in which she needs to call upon the services of a pathologist from the Moscow Institute – Cyril Lemke (Maxim Bitokov).
Their teamwork pays dividends so they endeavour to strike out alone and set up their own investigative group – the academy.
Their first acquisition to their new team consists of a spunky dreadlock haired hacker called Oksa (Elisavete Lotova). She is in trouble with the law for having hacked into military defence sites but her brilliant skills are just the job so they offer her some respite from the threat of jail if she works for them.
Next they enlist a rather cocksure biologist (Konstantinov). Then they further swell their ranks with a teenage chemistry boffin. All they need next is a psychology master and this arrives in the person of Doctor Rotkin (Yatso).
Another component of the mix is the traditional tough guy cop who comes with a gun (the rest of the team are not shooters, and this is part of their charm). Then, just as with Freud’s Method Zorina has to report to the elder of the tribe in the form of an uniformed and portly official.
Last, but by no means least the team employ an older security guard. He shows his Soviet origins by the reading of hard copy newspapers and the ability to conjure up historical facts which prove of use to investigations (`Nineteen fifty seven – that was the year of the International Youth Festival in Moscow`).
The scriptwriters then build a soap opera-like story arc around this extended family.
Backstories.
Zorina – who is so damned photogenic that she could suck a bag of lemons and still remain a beauty – gets ensnared in an on/off affair with a flashy lawyer but it is also apparent that there is some sexual tension between her and her pathologist associate Lemke.
Lemke, a suave metro sexual who wears pink shirts as though they are a uniform and disapproves of boxing,tries to ensure that his young son receives a good upbringing in spite of the boy’s capricious and flighty mother.
Oksa, the one time` hactivist`, still has the Sword of Damocles of a looming court case hanging over her. Zorina’s lawyer friend does his best to aid her, as does the biologist Ed Pirozhnov, who has eyes for her.
The young chemist, meanwhile has gone and fallen for Zorina’s younger sister and is also brooding over his impending conscription.
Doctor Rotkin is more of a dark horse. We only learn that he has a taste for classic rock, single malts and motorcycles and aims to write a book.
Deductions.
The untitled episodes all begin with the chance discovery of a gruesome corpse before the titles come up over a portentous score courtesy of Igor Krestovsky.
A forensic examination ensues in which cunning narratives revolve around scientific explanations: the holding up of a hair or piece of cloth by tweezers is often a pivotal moment in the story.
The skeleton of an African athlete from the nineteen fifties is discovered holed up in the wall of an office building,the mother of a gangster enacts revenge on the policemen who framed her son, a medic uses a secret nerve agent to assassinate foes,a female doctor experiments on drug addicted down-and outs in order to find a cure for her own drug dependent son. The answers are never on Ninety Third Street.
All the while Zorina is also embroiled in trying to find her missing policeman father. This search culminates in a rather overwrought conspiracy scenario which rocks the foundations of the academy, and closes Season Three.
Cracks.
Notwithstanding its overall professionalism, Akademia can appear lame at times.
The script is shared around the large cast like in one of those school plays where all the players must have a line to say. The in-car sequences, with their projected backdrops, take us back to the seventies, whereas the C.G I explosions are all too contemporary but unconvincing. So too are the latex corpses.
Then we have some obtrusive departures from verisimiltude. The pathology lab (which houses fresh dead bodies) gets treated like a living room with people barging in without prior permission. The chemical investigations sometimes present us with test tubes containing brightly coloured effervescing liquids in the manner of Doctor Jekyll.
One episode is brought to a close by the security man saving the day by shooting dead an errant villain, without anyone being concerned by the legal and moral implications of this act.
Pelmeni for the eyes.
Akademia seems more restrained and cerebral than C.S.I Miami, its rocky antecedent. This may be no bad thing, but then when you place this show alongside Freud’s Method it does fall a little short.
The latter feels grittier. For example their Moscow is sometimes wintry and ice-laden and they tackle issues such as immigration and drug abuse in a more head-on sort of way. Moreover, Freud’s Method offers some solid character acting, in particular from Ivan Okhlobstyn, against which the cast of Akademia look a little like automatons.
Akademia resembles a comforting bowl of supermarket pelmeni. It would not do you much good if taken too often. You might even find yourself entertaining the crazy notion that all is for the best in Putin’s Russia. Still, here we have a bit of pleasant well made, quality Russian television drama.
Episode 1 of series 1 of AKADEMIA.
The main picture is courtey of video.sibnet.ru
