The series “Fisher”: a powerful detective story about the capture of the Soviet maniac Review of the series “Fisher” with Ivan Yankovsky and Alexandra Bortich 02/05/2023 at 18:36

Out in 1986. Sitting at the edge of the forest, boy Igor tries to study a comet flying in the sky. But instead of a heavenly miracle, he witnesses an earthly horror: From the depths of the bush emerges a male figure holding the body of a torn youth in his arms. Frightened, Igor rushes home like a bullet and tells his family what he saw. But parents (played by Sergei Gilev and Anna Snatkina) prefer fiction on television to the truth of their son, with whom both get stuck and scold the boy for fairy tales. Then Igor himself calls the police and becomes a valuable witness in the case of a serial killer.

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Ivan Yankovsky on the set of Fisher (2023)

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At the same time, in Rostov – deliberately “gekaya” and “shokaya” – an experienced researcher Evgeny Bokov (Ivan Yankovsky) communicates with his seriously ill wife. A bell rings at home as he tries to find the inner record that has turned him from his usual professional rudeness to family affection. On the other end of the wire, the metropolitan authorities – Bokov, are summoned to Moscow, because the new murder bears the signature of a Rostov maniac. Deprived of choice, the hero flies away, but promises to return – but, as it turns out, not as fast as he would like.

In Moscow, two more investigators are recruited into Bokov’s team: single mother Natalya Dobrovolskaya (Alexandra Bortich) and a failed family man, but a cunning agent Valery Kozyrev (Alexander Yatsenko). In the first, the vulgar sexist Bokov will swear, and in the second, he will share family troubles. But no matter how hard it is for them to crush each other, they’ll have to embark on a six-year journey together (the real Fisher worked hard) – overcoming personal pain, social horror, and a system that’s starting to go out of style, entering a new era on lame legs.

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Alexandra Bortich on the set of Fisher (2023)

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This trio of main characters, with clear characters and working methods, is the main engine of the story. Resembling a bare wire, Bokov does his job honestly and conscientiously, although personal communication is unbearable. At first, Dobrovolskaya, attracted by him, seems like a pale pawn of the system (she pulls the first suspect by the ears, without hiding that she wants to close the case quickly so as not to ruin the statistics), but each gains new series autonomy and the status of a key player in the team. The habitually confused hero, Yatsenko Kozyrev, is a good family man and researcher, but neither he nor his relatives could be happier than this.

It is the close people of all the acting heroes of “Fisher” – from the operators to the relatives of the victims of the maniac – that set the tone for the whole picture. As founders Sergei Kalvarsky and Natalya Kapustina said about the project, Fisher is the story of the impact and consequences of evil. The murderer’s victims are much more than corpses dismembered by him. These are the grieving parents of teenagers and the devastated families of investigators who have given years of their lives to catch a maniac, and people simply chained by fear – out there, flesh-and-blood evil roams the streets, which means anyone can. next victim Like a dangerous poison, this fear gradually paralyzes society, anticipating the inevitability of consequences: from now on, everyone will have trouble sleeping at night.

The horror and dark atmosphere into which the Fisher world is immersed is successfully reflected in the visuals (perfect work by cameraman Ivan Lebedev) and is complemented by an excellent soundtrack by composer Oleg Karpachev. This is the hysterical and increasingly suspenseful sound of the abyss where darkness looks at the heroes.

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Alexander Yatsenko on the set of Fisher (2023)

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Fisher will be compared to both True Detective and Mindhunter, as is often the case with true crime prose. But all comparisons will be in vain – the series deliberately refuses to imitate the older brothers and tries to find its own intonation and style. It has more to do with The Execution of Lado Kvatania (where the events unfolded at the same time) than with Pizzolatto and Fincher’s projects.

Most likely, “Fischer” will be able to avoid public debate about whether he romanticized the image of a maniac. If the recently aired “The Beast: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” told the crimes from the criminal’s point of view, thus unwittingly or intentionally showing the world of history from a murderer’s perspective (the series has been severely criticized), “Fisher” completely denies the villain’s right to vote.

The first three parts of the project, which were shown to the press, arouse great hope: there is no authorial rudeness and viscous intolerance in it, it avoids common clichés and script ways, it finds its own way in this real and conditional dark forest.

“This is a story about hypocrisy, indifference, and a time when good was proclaimed, but evil really was what the front Soviet fronts were hiding,” the show’s producers admit. But even the most bleak scenario about the limitlessness of human evil is impossible without those who manage to stop this evil on their own.