6 Russian movies & TV shows you can watch on Netflix right now

‘To the Lake’ (2019)

This is the best known Russian television series abroad. It was released on the platform as a Netflix Original in 2020 and, at the end of the year, became the eighth most watched non-English-language series on the video service. True, the show (whose Russian title translates as ‘Epidemic’) was helped by its unwitting parallels with the real-life coronavirus pandemic raging at the time, but the main key to its success lies elsewhere. It is a beautifully written and superbly shot and acted thriller. Not for nothing did Stephen King himself praise ‘To the Lake’ on his Twitter account: “Pretty darn good… spaghetti western, only with snow!”

According to the plot, an outbreak of an unknown deadly virus sparks a social and political crisis and the main characters decide to drive to a place of safety. At the same time, the group is torn apart by internal tensions. The series is based on Yana Vagner’s bestseller ‘Vongozero’ - it is even surprising that the book itself only came out in the U.S. in the Summer of 2023. Even so, it was mentioned among the top new releases of the week by ‘The New York Times’.

‘Better than Us’ (2018)

This was the first Russian television series released as a Netflix Original. It is also the longest Russian TV show on the platform - 16 one-hour episodes.

In concept, ‘Better than Us’ is somewhat reminiscent of ‘I, Robot’ (2004) based on Isaac Asimov and the Swedish hit ‘Real Humans’ (2012). The action takes place in the not-so-distant future, where androids have become part of everyday life and have replaced people in menial jobs. Arisa, who ends up in the family of a pathologist, is the prototype of a new generation of robots. She is capable of feelings - she can love and hate, stand up for herself and, contrary to Asimov’s laws of robotics, can kill a human.

‘Chernobyl 1986’ (2021) (also titled: ‘Chernobyl: Abyss’)

Danila Kozlovsky - a superstar of Russian cinema - is known internationally from the TV show ‘Vikings’ (in which he plays Prince Oleg of Novgorod), ‘McMafia’, ‘Treason’ and the fantasy comedy horror for teens, ‘Vampire Academy’. But not everyone knows that he is also a successful movie director.

The full-length feature movie ‘Chernobyl’, his second directorial work, found itself somewhat pre-empted by an almost identically-named rival. At the release of the American-British mini-series in 2019, Kozlovsky’s ‘Chernobyl’ was already at the filming stage, but now it is inevitably regarded as a “Russian rejoinder”. In reality, it’s all much more straightforward - both are fine works, albeit similar in some ways and different in others. It is a visually inventive disaster movie about how a not very positive character - firefighter Alexey, played by Kozlovsky himself - is forced to become a hero.

‘The Silver Skates’ (2020)

This amazingly beautiful and truly Christmassy and romantic movie is based on a fairly simple idea. Crisscrossed by canals, late 19th century St. Petersburg becomes a labyrinth of skating rinks with the onset of icy weather. In the city, whoever has skates is king. A gang of pickpockets-on-skates does a particularly brisk haul in winter. Circumstances lead the pure-hearted Matvey, a lamplighter’s son, to join the group, which is led by the Marxist Alex. As is customary in many fairytales, the pauper falls in love with an aristocratic girl, Alice…

The screenplay, based on motifs drawn from a book by American writer Mary Mapes Dodge, was authored by co-writer of ‘To the Lake’, Roman Kantor, who is now working on the screen adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’ together with Michael Lockshin director of ‘The Silver Skates’.

‘Major Grom: Plague Doctor’ (2021)

Russia lacks the sort of rich tradition of comics that characterizes the U.S. or France, but, in recent years, the industry has been growing apace and is already beginning to make its mark on cinema. ‘Major Grom’ is Russia’s first big-budget adaptation of a comic book series and its makers hope it will lay the foundation for a whole cinematic universe like Marvel.

The plot of the fantasy action movie unfolds in an alternative reality where the incorruptible, hard-boiled detective, Major Grom, grapples with a supervillain calling himself the Plague Doctor. The subject is more than familiar, but the makers focus on the St. Petersburg local scenery and liberally dilute the action scenes with humor.

‘Sparta’ (2018)

A gripping thriller about the way the virtual world can have an impact on the real one. A teacher throws herself out of a window right in the middle of a lesson. An investigator begins to piece together what happened and discovers that the children in the class where the dead woman taught have been playing a very violent computer game.

The series, whose subject matter partly echoes the Steven Spielberg blockbuster ‘Ready Player One’ and the Netflix series ‘Kiss Me First’, was filmed by director Egor Baranov, celebrated for the ‘Gogol’ horror franchise, a fantasy biography of classic writer Nikolai Gogol. One of the principal roles here is played by Alexander Petrov, another superstar of Russian cinema - international audiences were able to see him in Luc Besson’s action thriller ‘Anna’ (2019). He also appears in Roman Polanski’s forthcoming film ‘The Palace’.