Servant of the People is the answer to the question: How can a comedy routinely bring one to tears? In light of Russia’s vicious ongoing military campaign in Eastern Europe, it’s not surprising that Netflix would once again make the first season of the 2015-2019 hit Ukrainian series available in America. Nonetheless, that context has cast a terrible pall over the show, especially given that it’s the saga of an average man who becomes the unexpected winner of the nation’s presidential election—and its star is none other than Ukraine’s actual current leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Rarely has life so startlingly imitated art, since Zelensky is himself a comedian who rose to the highest position in his country via an unlikely path that mirrored the very program that brought him fame in the first place (replete with the fact that Zelensky’s political party was named after Servant of the People). Thus, to watch his show today is to witness a fantasy destined to become a reality. Moreover, though, it affords a prescient peek at the hopes and dreams of Zelensky and Ukraine and, consequently, serves as a heart-wrenching reminder of the optimism that guided both during the last half of the prior decade, all of which—as with the sunshiny streets depicted in the opening credit sequence—has now been monstrously destroyed by Vladimir Putin’s tyrannical siege.
As a result, for every chuckle elicited by Servant of the People, there will probably also be some sobs—this despite its headliner’s charming portrayal of a working-class nobody whose desire for equality, fairness and honesty inspires his countrymen and, crazily, lands him a shot at affecting real change. Zelensky is Vasyl Petrovych Goloborodko, a high school history teacher whose world is irrevocably flipped upside-down when a student records him going on an extended rant to one of his colleagues about his frustrations with Ukraine’s corrupt political system. In an instant, the clip goes viral, and begets a grassroots movement to install him in office. That whirlwind turn of events is greeted joyously by his father Petro (Viktor Saraykin), mother Mariya (Natalya Sumska) and niece Natasha (Anna Koshmal), with whom he lives in a Kiev apartment, although it’s less welcomed by the enigmatic oligarchs who rule the country—shadowy figures whose faces are never fully seen, and who pull the strings from their mansions and penthouses, where they divvy up their spoils by playing Monopoly-style board games.
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Servant of the People is akin to a hybrid of Dave, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Thick of It and Veep, the latter channeled through handheld cinematography that provides a veneer of faux-documentary you-are-there realism. Its humor, however, is of a more topical variety, directly tackling ripped-from-the-real-world problems that Vasyl must face after winning the election and assuming command of a system that’s rife with corruption. Immediately at his side is Yuriy Ivanovich Chuiko (Stanislav Boklan), a political right-hand man who attempts to steer Vasyl through the ins and outs of government service. Yet as an idealist who has no interest in the perks of the presidency, and is actively committed to wholesale reform, Vasyl accepts Yuriy’s basic assistance without buying the bigger pro-status-quo picture that he’s selling. Granted an opportunity for upending the existing state of affairs, Vasyl aims high, and naturally finds himself in conflict with just about everyone he encounters.
Before long, Vasyl is recruiting a cabinet of outsiders that includes his ex-wife Olya (Olena Kravets), with whom he has 10-year-old son Dima (Rinat Khabibulin), as well as embarking on a bold course regarding hiring, taxation, and spending policies. All of these measures are challenges to Ukraine’s elites. Yet at every turn, Vasyl winds up on top—a fact that speaks to Servant of the People’s heartening outlook on the possibility of positive transformation. That extends from the corridors of Ukrainian power to the modest home of Vasyl, whose family is enticed by the very sorts of extravagant luxuries (free gifts, lavish accoutrements, etc.) that he’s attempting to root out of the country’s political arena. To be sure, threats of being co-opted by the establishment are everywhere, but in Vasyl, the series boasts a protagonist whose aw-shucks everyman attitude is as charming as his convictions about democracy are staunch.
While there are laughs to be had throughout Servant of the People’s maiden 23-episode run (the second and third seasons are, for the time being, absent on Netflix), it’s impossible to watch the series without thinking about how the values it champions are precisely why Putin has so furiously targeted the country. Similarly, the crookedness of its old-guard characters (such as a former president who wails, in response to his election defeat, “text message votes will save me!”) elucidate why Donald Trump believed he could bribe Zelensky into digging up dirt on Hunter Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential contest. Clearly, Trump hadn’t seen Servant of the People or, at least, didn’t realize that Zelensky wasn’t very different from his fictional proxy, whose pursuit of a better, more just Ukraine is alternately absurd and stirring, and—at present—resonates as a precursor to the heroism Zelensky is now demonstrating on a daily basis to allies and enemies alike.
From a domestic perspective, perhaps most moving of all about Servant of the People is that its primary frame of cultural and political reference isn’t Ukraine but, rather, the United States, be it in a casual reference to Fifty Shades of Grey, recurring mentions of Barack and Michelle Obama, or revealing fantasy sequences in which Vasyl confers with visions of Abraham Lincoln and infamous gangster Al Capone. America is the nation Ukraine looks to as a model worthy of emulation. In this particular, precarious moment in history, that love and admiration for the U.S. strikes a poignant chord. As news reports continue to broadcast horror stories from Ukraine, it’s difficult to derive much amusement from this make-believe portrait of Zelensky’s mission to bring about a democratic revolution. But it is, in ways both big and small, a stark snapshot of Ukraine’s hunger for freedom, and its leader’s dogged commitment to fighting for it.
