ИСТИНА

A run of the mill Russian television drama privileges males in the lead roles and narratives about gangsters or security services, often in retro settings ranging from the good old Stalinist time to the halcyon days of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule. In contrast, quality TV drama, that is, series favoring complex characters, social and even political issues, and hybrid, at times experimental, genres, challenges these worn-out models and often puts women with agency at the center of the narrative. One can easily identify an entire cluster of such shows, most of them available through domestic streaming services, such as Kion, More TV and TNT Premier.: Olga (2016-2023), Alice Cannot Wait (Alisa zhdat’ ne mochet 2022), Chicks (Chiki 2020), Russian Affairs (Soderzhanki 2019), Infidelities (Izmeny 2015), among others. Notably, in 2020 Russian critic Anton Dolin named Chicks the best TV series of the year. In our discussion we focus on one such recent TV drama, An Ordinary Woman (2018-2020), a quintessential melodrama where ordinary people are put in extraordinary circumstances and make difficult moral choices.