It's interesting, I didn't know anybody was motivated to make such rank anti-soviet propaganda anymore. I guess it's a bit retro and cool.
Here is a scene from the first episode, but the whole show is like this. It is worse than described in the bleak promotional materials which there themselves bleak
CW: Incarceration, torture, blood, murder
One of the top cosmonauts (in a previous scene she was brutally beaten on camera). This has to do with thinking she is a spy because of her brother. Now she is in a tiny cell, bleeding and cold, begging for her life and wearing fealty.
It turns out, due to diligent work by a junior clerical spy type person that her brother died as a baby so the whole thing is a mixup with another guy who happens to have the same name. Which the cosmonaut kept trying to explain during her prolonged beating.
The junior's boss bring her to this cell, the error is all confirmed as such. The boss hands they key to the junior who unlocks it. For a moment, it seems to the junior tat she is the instrument of freedom and there are smiles. But immediately, the boss reaches into her pocket:
After some moments indecision, while the cosmonaut is begging on her knees, the junior in unable to murder the cosmonaut. The boss takes the weapon and does it for her:
Moving on, they redo the first woman on the moon from FAM, except she fucks it up really badly and later they are threatening and shitty to her. They bring her to a Gulag to meet someone who could be her double to show she is replaceable unless she promises to behave and have the correct attitude.
Whatever you think of the USSR, it is not a plausible way for a society to function. Like literally there is not one moment of joy or kindness in here. No flowers or smiles or candy. Soviet people were monsters created by their condition.
The plot is mostly a series of people being threatened, hurt, glared at, etc. And there was a dicey space thing. But there is no tension or rhythm because it's all grim all the time. And since it's the first episode, you aren't attached to the characters, seeing them suffering isn't really engaging. I don't know how they are but I know they live in a place who's primary social goal is grind each person into dust.
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Yeah that drives me nuts. I thought my monitor settings got messed up