What happened on the territory of the former republics of the Soviet Union after its collapse can be called with full responsibility the rampant crime. And what was to be done to people who had lost the meaning of life and livelihood? Unemployment flourished, corruption of the bureaucratic apparatus strengthened, the first millionaires began to appear.
In addition, there was a merger of law enforcement agencies with criminal groups. At the same time, former “Afghans”, participants in the Chechen campaign, as well as the military, who were not paid a salary, lived in society. These skilled “fighters” were tempted to make easy money. Ordinary people in the evening were afraid to leave the house, and contract killings of the “new Russians” became commonplace.
Russian filmmakers used this fertile ground to create a new genre of "crime series." He was loved by the audience and appreciated by television companies that began to “stamp” such products tirelessly.
As a rule, all the plot lines of such series were based on the confrontation between an honest and courageous representative of law enforcement agencies and a powerful criminal group. But, unlike similar American or European television detective products, our police officers were not always the winners. Many directors romanticized the criminals and then such “cute” characters appeared as Sasha Bely or Kostyan Kot, and sometimes real Russian philosophers like Danila Bagrova. This was the main difference between Russian television series about criminals and Western cinema.
The audience fell in love with our native bandits, because they understood them and explained to themselves the reasons for the illegal actions of these heroes. Simply, most of these people fell victim to circumstances.
Older people who remember perfectly what happened in the country twenty years ago may be a little nostalgic and remember the time when they were younger, but they are unlikely to want to relive again the feelings of hopelessness and fear that filled the air of the nineties, unless what's on the TV screen.
With the passage of time and changes in the country, the plots of Russian crime series have also changed. Raspberry-colored double-breasted jackets and two-hundredth “Mercier” are less common on the screens, a new direction has appeared where investigators and criminals fight not with the help of fists and pistols, but thanks to their developed intellectual abilities. Be that as it may, but viewers of different ages continue to watch Russian crime series with pleasure for the fact that in them, as on a litmus test, our whole uneasy but at the same time interesting life is shown.
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