Easy money

The picaresque series "Londongrad" about the life of "global Russians" in the capital of Great Britain starts on the STS channel on September 7

A few years ago, the STS channel offered Andrey Ryvkin and I to make a series for them, - explains one of the authors of the script, former editor-in-chief of GQ magazine Mikhail Idov. - We were given a brief in just three words - "Russians in London." And then we began to think about how to deal with the annoying, but inevitable stereotypes about Russian London: we wanted to simultaneously use these stereotypes and remain at arm's length from them. As a result, we came up with the idea to make a series about a certain Londongrad agency that solves all sorts of problems for Russians in London, the so-called fixer. At the head of the agency, we decided to put a cynical mathematician who left Oxford - by the nature of his work he constantly clashes with Russian oligarchs, but he himself cannot stand them. That is, we look at them through the eyes of Misha Kulikov.”

Miron, Misha, Nikita The success or failure of the series, the first season of which was directed by Dmitry Kiselev (the first four episodes), Vitaly Shepelev (from the fifth to the eighth series) and Vlad Nikolaev (the last eight episodes), depended on how accurate the appointment would be. main role. The last thing I wanted to see was another stilted Russian movie, where goggle-eyed people oppress us with their temperament.

Fortunately, Misha Kulikov turned out to be exactly what he should be - not stupid, careless, modern, quick in reactions. The role went to Nikita Efremov, who surprisingly looks like his face and intonations, either his father, Mikhail, or his grandfather, Oleg. In the first episode, he will work a little as a guide for us. Ignoring Big Ben, Westminster and other tourist attractions, he will take us through the haunts and police stations of London: here, he will explain, stopping the action and turning to the camera, the children of Russian oligarchs squander money, and from here I extract them after drunken brawls. The names of the oligarchs in Londongrad are not named, allowing themselves slightly frondier jokes: “If I name the last name, they will close us,” Misha explains to the viewer, meaning either his agency or the STS channel.

The main character of "Londongrad" has a real prototype. Russian rapper Oxxxymiron (real name Miron Fedorov) also dropped out of Oxford in 2006 and took up what he neatly puts it as “adventurous freelancing in London in the service industry for former compatriots.” The tasks could be almost anything - from tutoring to conflict resolution. “I got people out of the British apes and monitored the drug addiction of the offspring of the elite, listened to the frightening confessions of oligarchs, former field commanders and porn actresses. At one time, my mobile phone notebook looked like something in between the lists of Forbes, Tatler and Interpol, but not all clients were rich, ”Miron tells one of the music sites. A couple of stories from his adventurous biography made it into the script. Encouraged by the attention to his person, Oxxxymiron just the other day performed a new life-affirming rap song: "Londongrad from the underground to the screen, / A series is being shot based on my adventures."

How Londongrad Works Almost all the episodes, with the exception of the pavilions, were filmed in London, which has become an important character here - views of the British capital burst into the frame almost as often as in the British TV series Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch. But if Misha Kulikov even dreamed of Sherlock's glory, then the hell with it, he will succeed - there are a lot of smart people around, and the concentration of Russian freelancers with adventurous thinking in this city is clearly off the charts. Already in the first episode, the hero finds himself a cunning partner who eluded his rich Moscow official dad and immediately managed to circle Misha around her finger. She clearly does not look like a naive Watson in a skirt, and Misha and Alice (Ingrid Olerinskaya) agree to be creative on an equal footing: something like “you are Sherlock one series, I am the other”. And next to them is something like Mrs. Hudson - meaning as imperturbable and as observant as the old housekeeper of Holmes, the Ryazan taxi driver Stepan (Pavel Ilyin), who husks sunflower seeds near Heathrow Airport, waving his car keys. How he teleported here with his old Zhiguli, the devil knows, but it's funny.

Already in the first episodes of Londongrad, a clear scheme emerges, according to which the scriptwriters intend to act. The American legal series “Law & Order” and “The Good Wife” are arranged according to similar rules: each series has a main storyline where the characters investigate another intricacies, and a couple of side ones that they will find continued in future episodes.

How Londongrad works “Brother, let it be London for them, but for us it is Londongrad,” minted Oxxxymiron. Over the years, it is no longer possible to establish who first came up with the mocking word Londongrad, but apparently it happened in the early 2000s, when thousands of our compatriots rushed to the British capital against the background of the oil boom. The figures are different - according to the Guardian newspaper, which just recently published an article about the series "Londongrad", about 150 thousand so-called global Russians settled here.

In our country, films about the phenomenon called “Londongrad” seem to have not yet been made, but the British were noted for a couple of documentaries in which, frankly, immigrants from Russia, brandishing a pouch stuffed to capacity, do not look very attractive. One such film, narrated by the legendary Seva Novgorodtsev, was released on the BBC in early January under the heading Rich, Russian and Living in London. The title of the second, which hit TV screens in July, also speaks for itself: From Russia With Cash - it investigates the influx of dirty money from Russian officials laundered by investments in British real estate.

Unlike English documentary filmmakers, the screenwriter and showrunner of Londongrad, Mikhail Idov, emphasizes the apolitical nature of his series in every possible way, being afraid to somehow frame STS. He is, of course, right: "Londongrad" is first of all a witty picaresque story, where every crook strives to deceive another crook. “We could just as well shoot this series in another city,” Idov insists. London is not very close to me. It's easy for me in New York, but uncomfortable and scary in London. But maybe it's for the best that the series is made without some kind of puppy love for this city. We need London rather for entourage.” Entourage - entourage, but it was London that became a big "laundry" and a center of attraction for Russian moneybags. The smell of not just money, but very big and very easy money circulating around Misha, Alice and other "adventurous freelancers" is noticeable in almost every episode. According to the same Oxxxymiron,

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a state councilor / You or a ladies’ man, / But you have something that never happened / In my pocket since birth. / Well, we have to share, / We, adventurers, / We must continue our adventures.” Photo: kinopoisk.ru