Russian TV series with English subtitles - Available on Youtube
This excellent eight-part series is based on a true story set around the Soviet Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and German-occupied Crimea, and tells a tale of deadly espionage and counter-espionage just before the Soviet Crimean offensive of 1944. Running parallel is a simmering love plot that complicates the relationship of the two main characters, SMERSH agents, Captain 3rd Rank Elena Soley, played by Ekaterina Vilkova, and Captain 2nd Rank Sergei Subarov, played by Pavel Trubiner.
This 2020 series by Sergey Shcherbin opens with the destruction of ships of the Soviet Black Sea fleet by German-trained sabotage units manned by Soviet ‘traitors’ and headed by a Romanian Count, Graf Cotrianou, who runs a sabotage school dedicated to destroying the Soviet fleet. To counter this threat, Soviet counter intelligence, SMERSH, created by Stalin to provide counter-intelligence, call in their top lad, Captain 2nd Rank Sergei Subarov.
The series begins with the easy on the eye and very clever Captain 3rd Rank Elena Soley married to another smashing SMERSH, formerly Subarov’s best mate. Elena is also Subarov’s almost girlfriend, the man Elena wanted to marriy but didn’t. Feeling rejected she shacked up with said best mate, who gets the chop early on, resulting in a very strained but intriguing relationship between boss Subarov and second-in-command Elena.
Their story is gradually told in a series of flashbacks to carefree, always sunny pre-war Leningrad. Obviously, they fancied each other like mad, but it’s up and down according to Elana’s mood and Subarov’s diffidence. You know that they are going to end up in each other’s arms, but you have to wait until the end to know how and whether they’ll both be alive when it happens. The tension between them though, very much adds to the already high dramatic effect of the deadly spy story.
Romance aside, Stalin still has to win his war against fellow socialist Hitler, and Crimea has to be liberated. And for this, the Soviets need their Black Sea Fleet, which the dastardly Graf Cotrianou intends to destroy. The Count has a surprisingly large and well-embedded team of spies in Novorossiysk, including his adopted Russian son, a former aristocrat who hates the Soviets for bumping off his family. There follows a series of exciting, well-thought-out twists and turns, as happens with spies and counter spies, with first the Fascists on top, then the Bolsheviks and back again. But the Subarov and Elena team, with a dazzling display of nifty footwork that would have had George Best gagging with envy, capture the Count’s ‘son’ and cleverly convert him to their cause. Or do they?
Captain 3rd Rank Elena Soley, played by Ekaterina Vilkova
The turned spy persuades Subarov to let him go and return to the sabotage school and his adopted old man, where he will arrange for Subarov’s sabotage squad to turn up, kill all the Counts saboteurs and destroy his school. As the story reaches its climax, you are left wondering who the Count’s son is really working for. Will he betray Subarov or his dodgy Dad? Watch it and find out. It’s a beautifully shot series, well-acted with an intriguing story line, a war film for men and women and those in between.
And for you Russophobes, stop it and behave yourselves. The series was shot in 2020, a couple of years before Putin’s invasion, and contains no trace of propaganda. It also gives an interesting picture of how the Russians see themselves and the Soviet era.