ABSTRACT
In looking at the themes of law and order, it seems reasonable to con-
textualize mystery series and/or thrillers according to the years before
Putin’s inauguration in March 2000, his first term (until the landslide of
December 2003), and then the second, current term in office (since the
spring of 2004). The earliest shows in this chain were often the simplest,
too, displaying a marked structural naı¨vety. In the mid-1990s, for example,
viewers were offered Vadim Derbenev’s On the Corner of Patriarch’s Ponds (Na uglu u Patriarshikh), wherein a policeman, investigating a ring of inter-
national antique smugglers, ‘‘very unexpectedly finds his true love, too. She
is called Natasha. She’s intelligent, slender, and mysterious – a complex
individual.’’ The connection between the two plots was less than natural.
There was an awareness amongst studios prior to the Default that these
types of TV series needed to be both exciting and emotionally engaging, but
the relationship between the two intentions looked either contrived or
simply non-existent. A more persuasive interface of public and private plots would be devel-
oped in future years via increased thematic intricacy, as shown by the sub-
sequent evolution of Patriarch’s Ponds. The second season of 2001 involved
the same central character of Sergei Nikol’skii (played by Igor’ Livanov),
but criminality had now blossomed beyond cops and robbers. It consisted
of burglary, robbery, blackmail, drug trafficking, prostitution, and corrupt
politics, i.e. the forces still battled weakly by love in today’s feature films like
The Point (Tochka), It Doesn’t Hurt (Mne ne bol’no), and Junk (Zhest’ [all 2006]). All were quickly included in the early episodes of Patriarch’s Ponds,
blurring any clear-cut definition of modern society and its negative opera-
tions. As promotional texts of the time told us, with such frenzied activity at
work, ‘‘Nikol’skii’s private life isn’t at all easy.’’
