20 Mar 2019

Review – Russian Doll: a complex and compelling show from Netflix

From Widescreen, 3:12 pm on 20 March 2019

If you want an entertaining TV show that's off-beat to the point of bizarre, Russian Doll is for you, says Dan Slevin.

Dan Slevin: When it comes to choosing the subjects I cover in these pages, I tend for the most part to follow my nose.

I see new films and limited dramatic series show up on various feeds and I investigate further. If one of my RNZ colleagues has already covered a particular topic, in general I leave it alone*. There’s plenty more fish in the sea and all that.

Sometimes I get a tip-off. Like last Thursday night when I emerge from the home office to ask my wife what she’s watching.

The first four episodes of Russian Doll on Netflix, she replies. Any good, I ask? Very interesting, she says. Should I write about it? I think you should. Do you mind watching the first four episodes (of eight) again?

Natasha Lyonne as Nadia in the birthday party bathroom she is about to become very familiar with, in Russian Doll from Netflix.

Natasha Lyonne as Nadia in the birthday party bathroom she is about to become very familiar with, in Russian Doll from Netflix. Photo: Netflix

With that negotiation out of the way, we sat down to watch the first couple of eps. Then on Sunday night, we added another one.

Last night we started early enough to watch episode four and then let the whole thing roll over us, the final four episodes without interruption and without comment.

Russian Doll is different enough that you will want to pay attention and, once it has its teeth in you, you will want to finish it as quickly as you can. Luckily, each episode is an easy-to-manage 25 minutes making the whole series … [checks calculator] 3.33-recurring hours.

Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) rescues her lost cat, Oatmeal, from a homeless person in the park. Or does it really need rescuing?

Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) rescues her lost cat, Oatmeal, from a homeless person in the park. Or does it really need rescuing? Photo: Netflix

Series co-creator Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black) plays Nadia, a New York City game designer celebrating her birthday when she drunkenly steps out in front of a taxi and is killed.

Almost immediately, she wakes up again, back at the birthday party with her life – she starts to realise – reset.

After several more – increasingly bizarre and not un-comedic – deaths and resets, Nadia’s investigation takes increasingly bizarre and disturbing turns.

The first couple of episodes feel very Groundhog Day – the resets use Nilsson’s 1971 song 'Gotta Get Up' the way that the Bill Murray film used Sonny & Cher – but by about episode four, the show has taken on a character of its own.

By then you’ll have started to warm to Lyonne’s brash and confronting New Yorker, who sometimes seems to be channelling Peter Falk’s Columbo in an ill-fitting borrowed overcoat.

She curses a lot more than he does, however.

Russian Doll

Photo: Netflix

It’s such a tonic to see something that feels genuinely different.

Not a police procedural, serial killer, kitchen sink, drama with the same old tired drab colour palette, Russian Doll is alive with the sounds, colours and characters of New York even as it is killing its main character over and over again.

*Yes, I know that Russian Doll has been covered by no less than four different RNZ television reviewers which makes me number five. I can live with that. It’s that good.

Russian Doll is streaming on Netflix now and is rated R16 (according to their own standards).

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