IN THIS AMBITIOUS BUT PREDICTABLE DARK FANTASY SERIES THE WORLD’S BEST KNOWN SLEUTH IS ON THE TRAIL OF THE RIPPER IN RUSSIA’S CULTURAL CAPITAL. BUT, WAIT…ARE THOSE TEARS?
Embrace the chaos, Mr Holmes!
One thing that enlivened a dull pandemic was the fact that some people were doling out free face masks in some metro stations in Moscow. These promotionals were swish black items featuring the legend Sherlock v Rossi – Sherlock in Russia.
Sherlock in Russia AKA Sherlock: the Russian Chronicles represents the latest uncalled for addition to the overstretched Sherlock Holmes smorgasbord. This 18+ period-mystery-action show reached Russia on October 6th this year as part of the Moscow International Film Festival. Then it would infect a wider audience through being offered as a weekly subscription by START Video Service. The series was shown every Thursday in 52 minute long episodes until December 3rd.
Millenial iconoclasm.
It has been open season on the august occupant of 221b Baker Street since the turn of the millenium if not before. The Soviet Union, despite seeming to be steadfast in opposition to Western imperialism and so on, did at least distinguish itself with its fidelity to the Arthur Conan-Doyle scripture. The television series filmed by Lenfilm and running from 1979 to 1986 called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is viewed by many afiocandos of the cult fiction to be among the Gold Standards.
The post-communist Russian Federation, however, has come out fighting with its own sacriligeous pop culture variants on the Sherlock mythos to match those of Britian and America.
Thus seven years back one Igor Petrenko embodied Sherlock Holmes in a television drama called just that (produced by Rossiya1 and Central Partnership). He seemed more like a poet than a detective the reviewer Kim Newman said of his portrayal (Wikipedia).
This fare, however, still held onto the apron strings of the traditional canon; Sherlock Holmes in Russia all but dispenses with it. In that regard, the clearest precedent for this would seem to be Guy Ritchie’s 2009 shameless make-over of the cerebral icon as the sort of youthful, dapper action hero that could be played by Robert Downey Junior (Sherlock Holmes, Warner Bros, 2009).
Illustrious names.
A 55 year old conceptual artist from Sverdlosk comprises one of the culprits for this show. A member of the infamous Blue Noses Art Group no less, Alexander Shaburov also penned a series entitled The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes between 1991 and 1992.
Then the prolific fifty year-old screen writer Oleg Malovichko – who worked on this year’s breakthrough film Sputnik among many other prominent releases – transmuted these sketches into something watcheable.
Then a bankable star to don the dear-stalker and hold the pipe was the only other thing that was needed. Step forward the 38 year-old Svetly born Maxim Matvyeev – who appeared in Stilyagi in 2008 and played Vronsky in a TV adaptation of Anna Karenina three years ago .
Artifice.
Despite being filmed on location in Saint Petersburg, the scenes exude an overall contrived appearance with a crepescular ochre-burnt orange shade to everything. The iconography reminded me of the look of Viktor Frankenstein, the British film from 2015.
Matvyeev’s Holmes could not be further from the classic late middle-aged sexually ambigous representation of him. This actor is a screen idol type in the Danila Kozlovsky mould. He plays him with a trimmed beard and a floppy fringe and demonstrating cuddly emotions. He even blows on his magnifying glass as though it were a smoking gun.
Other nods to our brave new world include jerky camera shots and, at one early point, a cretinous glitch in the matrix in the form of a snatch of music from Britney Spears’s Toxic ! (We can be grateful that the otherwise more appropriate sepulchural soundtrack is by Ryan Otter for most of the proceedings).
On the hunt for a legend.
The breakneck paced action opens in rain-soaked back alleys of East London. Somebody (who at least has the decency to wear a mask) is trawling the alleways with knife crime on his mind. He is closing in on a quarry, when:
Hello, Mr Ripper, allow me to introduce myself.... comes the opening line of You Know Who. Telegenic fisticuffs then ensue. Watson comes to the rescue but this results in him being put into a coma.
Distraught at his companion’s fate, Holmes nevertheless takes a steam train bound for Russia. He has deduced that the serial killer is from that land on account of the make of knife that he uses. Furthermore, the killer has been leaving taunting messages for Holmes written in blood on street walls.
New friends and enemies.
Holmes arrives in Saint Petersburg and takes up lodgings in Pekarskaya Street (this is a pun on Baker street – a pekarniya being a bakery in Russian). He mails missives back to London to update those at home and his letters are read out to the unconscious Watson as a kind of therapy (this narrative device is borrowed in part from The Hound of the Baskervilles).
His host consists of a hired medical assistant in the form of the hardboiled Doctor Kartsev (the 52 year old Muscovite Vladimir Mishukov) with whom he faces a rocky partnership.
The trope of Interference From Those in Authority is fulfilled by the Chief of Police Znamensky. This buffonish character regards Dostoevsky (who Holmes is well versed in) as over-rated and considers the work of the Ripper to be the handiwork of an ecaped gorilla. He regards the migrants deductive approach – presented here as a sort of savant’s mental tick over which Holmes has no control – as a lot of new fangled nonsense.
It is whilst on a fact-finding tour of the Saint Petersburg slums – bring a knife and a prayer Kartsev advises him -that he encounters the plot’s crucial love interest: Sophie, played by the inevitable Irina Starshenbaum.
Russian self-reflection.
In a manner rare for a Russian product Sherlock in Russia does try to say something about Russian identity in relation to the rest of the world. It is the illiberal and very much autocratic Russia of Alexander the Third’s reign that Holmes steps into.( Some might draw paralells with today’s Russia).
As soon as Holmes emerges from the station at Saint Petersburg he treads on a cow pat. Later we learn that Kartsev harbours a particular suspicion of the British. His memory of his uncle being shot by by a British sniper in the Crimean war has seen to that.
Holmes, who has an improbable level of Russian fluency, has to learn some Russian idiomatic phrases. I'll smash myself into a pancake, for example is a promise to work very hard.
Znamensky, meanwhile does seem to embody a certain type of Russian provincial ignorance. He has to be told not to let his colleagues wash away the evidence from the scene of a crime, for example.
So…this Russia is a bit rustic, holds old grudges,is full of quaint phrases and inept in its handling of investigative policing. Later in the series Holmes will even utter the words: I don't understand Russia. It's terrible.
Holmes in love.
Matvyeev’s Holmes outstrips Downey Junior’s in being teary-eyed, soulful and in opening up to the ladies. This Holmes has a full on hetersosexual relationship, which may well be a first. He also suffers visionary flashbacks in the manner of the re-imagined Nikolai Gogol in the cinema-cum TV series Gogol, which may have been the model for this series.
That said, there is one traditional aspect of this drama and it is something which has lent a rare 18+ certificate and prevents it from going out on mainstream terrestrial Russian television. This is the dwelling on the gentleman sleuth’s addiction to cocaine. I doubt this fact will placate the international Sherlock Holmes community though.
Judging from the First Episode this series may be cheesy, but it is not bereft of intelligence. For me the most menmorable character was Doctor Kartsev. He was more Holmes than Holmes was in many ways.
The lead image: deneri.net.
SHERLOCK IN RUSSIA – First Episode with English subtitles:
