

8.086 minSeason 1 • Episode 12
LatestHow will Anikeev's house arrest end and who will become the mayor of Sineozersk?
The current mayor of the city of Sineozyorsk, Arkadiy Anikeyev, is caught taking a bribe on an especially large scale, after which, by a court decision, he is placed under house arrest and must stay for a long time at his place of residence in a communal apartment. Arkadiy is abandoned by his wife, to whom all the property was recorded. Once in a communal apartment, Anikeyev runs into Ivan Samsonov, with whom they were neighbors in a communal apartment in childhood. Leaving aside disagreements, Anikeyev decides to help Samsonov become the new mayor of Sineozyorsk, so that he will help to remove all charges from him
Acting
Derevyanko and Robak's deliciously petty chemistry
Writing
Slepakov's razor-sharp political satire
Production
Claustrophobic communal flat becomes character
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Sineozyorsk is a fictionalized version of real Russian 'closed cities'—Soviet nuclear research towns so secret they appeared on no maps, making the mayor's fall from grace to communal living especially humiliating.
Semyon Slepakov, the creator, is Russia's most famous comedy songwriter; this was his first series, and he cast Derevyanko after seeing him in a sketch show where he played a similarly pathetic bureaucrat.