Ukrainian president Vlodomyr Zelensky is a masterful media strategist, if Americans have learned anything about him in the weeks since Russia invaded his country. Zelensky said when suggesting negotiations that he was referring to Putin's habit of sitting at the other end of long tables, as well as his prior experience as an actor.
This is a great time for western audiences to learn more about Zelensky's Servant of the People, one of the most intriguing and historically important shows you could possibly watch right now. Despite a number of obstacles, you should watch as much as you can and as fast as you can.
The show ran in Ukraine for three seasons and a movie. Zelensky's character is a history teacher who is unexpectedly elected president in a landslide after his students post a video of him complaining about corruption and crowdfund his campaign online. Zelensky started a Servant of the People Party, ran for president in a campaign run almost entirely on social media, and won.
It may not be possible to explain why Russia started this war as well as, say, The Death of Stalin, in which we see a megalomaniacal Russian leader and his cowed underlings who can't even trust each other, let alone deliver bad news. For outsiders, Servant of the People is a lesson in Ukrainian politics and culture, but it is easy to binge watch. The humor is universal.
This is a satire of the fast- moving kind. The show tells the terrible truth about billionaires who stop any government from working for the people, in a way only a court jester of a hopeful democracy can.
Zelensky emerges from the show as a true believer in democracy. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a great advertisement for democratic principles in dark times. In both stories, a naive history-lover is elevated to high office, refuses to bow to corruption, and has a line of morality.
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Mr. Smith is given a humor upgrade by way of Servant of the People, with a little Walter Mitty-style daydreaming (Zelensky's character, Vasily Petrovich Goloborodko, often finds himself talking to historical figures in his head). If you watch it all after that name-checking, you will see scenes and setups that remind you of The Office, Parks and Rec, The Great, The Thick of It, Yes Prime Minister, and Arrested Development.
The trouble is watching it all. After tracking down the world's most wondered-about show, the best I can suggest is that you time-travel back a couple of years and watch it in its entirety before it disappears from the streaming service for still-unexplained reasons. Winter on Fire is a documentary about the protests that forced the president of Ukraine to flee the country.
If you live in the UK, Servant of the People is on Channel 4 at a slow rate. Only three of the 24 episodes from the first season are available on the All 4 app in the UK. It is pretty much what you can find on torrenting services. According to multiple reports, the company that owns TV rights has been doing brisk sales, but will not say if there is a U.S. taker yet. The show that proves the Putin apologist is based on the amount of misinformation about Zelensky.
There is good and bad news for Servant of the People viewers on YouTube. Zelensky's own production company has uploaded every episode, so we are talking high-quality transfers, not bad user rips. Most of the episodes offer only Russian subtitles. This is good news for the anti-Putin forces in Russia, where the show was already popular, and Zelensky's heroism needs to be kept top of mind. Some of the episodes have English subtitles. Zelensky has brought millions of ad impressions to the online video giant, so if they wanted to do some good in the world, they could sink some money into a full-on worldwide Servant of the People translation project.
Here is a quick guide to the best Servant of the People viewing experience currently available.
The double-length premiere is a good place to start. The Servant of the People dropped us into the story of the history teacher who found out that his campaign for the president was successful. You would be right to distrust the prime minister, who is silky smooth. The story of the viral video is told in the past. We will learn later in the show that the shadowy oligarchs are anonymous, their faces covered by furniture as they plot devious schemes.
The joke that was cut when the show aired in Russia is here. Vasily was offered a range of expensive watches, and was told which one Putin favored.
The third episode focuses on Vasily's family, in an early sign of the corruption that will surround him everywhere he goes, his mother, father, niece and sister are seen promising government positions to their friends and receiving 100 percent discounts at their favorite stores. A shopping trip is in order after the family fears it won't be able to dress as nicely as Obama. The fourth wall shatters when a couple of policemen ask the family if they can do something about comedians who criticize the government.
My favorite scene of the show is when Vasily is shown around his new presidential residence. He finds a chandelier so expensive that it caused the country to default on its debt during the financial crisis, and a parrot that says "no, you're the idiot!" when it hears the name of the ousted pro-Putin president. If you want to see Zelensky's character talking about his inauguration address with Lincoln, you'll need to watch this version.
The best example of physical comedy on the show is Episode 5. Vasily spends most of his time running away from his security detail. In the second, we learn that his predecessor barricaded himself into his office with a bar full of booze and a shotgun. This is the first scene that hits differently in the wake of Donald Trump's disastrous bid to cling on to power, as Russia has invaded Ukraine.
The quality of the English translation starts to go downhill with episode 6 in which Vasily falls out with his family, yells "Putin has been overthrown" to get the attention of squabbling deputies, and has a chat with Che Guevara. The subtitles disappear in episode 7. The show takes a turn towards screwball office comedy in episode 8 as Vasily brings in a cabinet of outsiders, only they all happen to be his old school friends. It is hard for a viewer to not notice that the show presents them as trusted allies who are less likely to take bribes. One member of the new cabinet was given a dose of drugs in episodes 9 and 10.
We are lost without English subtitles for the next 13 episodes. Good luck with auto-translating the Russian caption. The most epic English language experience in the current canon is here.
Zelensky and company made a 90-minute movie out of a planned plotline from the second season of Servant of the People. The prime minister is in jail and Vasily is dating an assistant who is also one of their people.
Several cities that are currently under heavy Russian bombardment are included in the train that Vasily and Yuri take to the east of the country. A road movie farce ensues. Vasily's hapless foreign minister tries to keep the leadership of the International Monetary Fund drunk as he tries to keep the Ukrainians from applying for a loan from the International Monetary Fund.
The speech Vasily made at the end of the movie responding to the loan offer from the International Monetary Fund is beautiful and can be applied to any situation where Ukraine has been pushed too far. We need to roll up our sleeves and work hard when we understand that stealing is bad. The whole world will say "glory to Ukraine!".
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