Television Review: Method (Metod, Season 1, 2015)

Russia is a vast country whose human and material resources are so immense that, despite all the obstacles created by ideology, corruption or incompetence, they must sooner or later come to the fore. This also applies to the Russian film and television industry, which, largely thanks to its gigantic domestic market, possesses a foundation on which it can build quality productions. Although it is still early to say whether Russia will have its own Golden Age of Television, there were signs that things could be moving in that direction.

Most responsible for this is Sreda, a production company founded by producer Aleksander Tsekalo, which in the 2010s found what used to be the Holy Grail for non‑American television creators – a distribution deal with Netflix. Thanks to this, the global audience has had the chance to watch several Russian films and TV series, among which the 2017 mini‑series Trotsky is probably the best known. Part of the crew from that series had two years earlier made the highly praised crime series Method, whose first season was also available on Netflix.

Konstantin Khabensky, who played the eponymous revolutionary leader in Trotsky, appears in Method in the role of the protagonist, a police major named Rodion Meglin. Right from the start of the series, Meglin enjoys a reputation as a brilliant investigator, possessing an incredible ability to uncover the motives and perpetrators of the most severe and complex crimes; his “method” of finding villains is so valuable that his colleagues and superiors are willing to overlook some of his less desirable traits.

He meets Yevgeniya Steklova (Paulina Andreeva), a girl who, after obtaining her law degree, begins a career in the criminal police, motivated by a desire to solve the never‑resolved murder of her mother, which has marked her life so far. After seeing Meglin find the perpetrator of a spectacular murder – whose victim was her friend – in just a few minutes, she decides to become Meglin’s partner to learn his “method.” After her father Andrey Steklov (Vitaliy Kishchenko), a high‑ranking official in the Ministry of Justice and a long‑time acquaintance of Meglin, rather reluctantly allows her to start working with him, Yevgeniya begins to accompany him on trips across Russia where the two help local police catch the cruellest, most cunning and dangerous serial killers.

It quickly becomes apparent that Meglin cannot function without large amounts of alcohol and all sorts of pills, and that he is burdened by quite serious health problems, making it unlikely he will live to see retirement. For Yevgeniya, however, the greatest cause for concern is Meglin’s tendency to apply the principles of “do‑it‑yourself” criminal justice, even when it involves cold‑blooded executions. When this is combined with Meglin’s use of a network of bizarre collaborators he calls “our people,” Yevgeniya concludes that the reason for his successes is that he himself is a sociopath who thinks and has dark tendencies like the people he hunts.

Method, primarily because of its protagonist, was often compared after its premiere to Dexter, although the series shows far more influence from other TV shows, above all True Detective. From it, or rather from its first season, it borrows a narrative structure in which events are shown through flashbacks, i.e., through the narrative framework of an investigation in which Yevgeniya – visibly changed after a series of traumatic experiences – describes to two not‑exactly‑friendly investigators everything she did with Meglin, who is spoken of throughout in the past tense.

The first season consists of 16 episodes, and its creators, following the example of many contemporary detective series, combine a “solid” main plot characteristic of mini‑series with episodic procedurals resembling conventional series like CSI and Law & Order. In the latter, however, one can see how distant Method actually is from its American equivalents. This refers above all to the extreme explicitness of the content, which includes not only sex and nudity, but also violence, featuring rather unpleasant and disturbing scenes whose victims are helpless elderly people and children.

The uncomfortable impression is reinforced by the fact that the series, otherwise filmed in Nizhny Novgorod (a city that during the 2018 World Cup gained a reputation as the best “polished” host), is set largely in the Russian provinces, which, as in many other countries, are in far worse condition compared to dynamic “cool” metropolises. Thus Method depicts Social Realist housing and public buildings that no one has seriously renovated since Soviet times, and it does not hesitate at all to show the dark sides of Putin’s Russia, which include still‑unchecked corruption, universal moral decay, social divisions, and money‑ and politically‑connected “greased” power‑brokers who can afford to take part in the filthiest crimes and dirty dealings.

The series also suggests that Meglin owes his “method” and its tolerance by his superiors to the fact that as a young man he participated in “wet work” for Soviet, and later post‑Soviet, security services. Many of the cases investigated by Meglin and Yevgeniya, moreover, are based on real individuals and events, i.e., serial killers from the Soviet and post‑Soviet period whose activities and body count would send a shiver even among the most hardened Western fans of the true‑crime genre.

A specificity of Method, i.e., a difference compared to most Western series of a similar type, is that all episodes were directed by a single person – Yuriy Bykov, known before this series as the author of the 2013 film The Major, which dealt with the theme of police corruption. Bykov did a very good job trying to maintain a consistent visual style, based largely on vivid colours that highlight blood, passion and excess. The series also benefits from being anchored in a clear timeframe of several months, beginning in summer and ending in winter, so that the external atmosphere begins to correspond with the protagonist’s mood, i.e., an increasingly darker tone as the story approaches its – for Meglin tragic, and otherwise entirely predictable and logical – ending.

Khabensky, who enjoys the status of Russia’s best actor, is perfect in his role, which, on the other hand, perhaps cannot be said of Andreeva, who at times looks too much like “eye candy” for anyone to take her seriously as a hardened police investigator. One sometimes finds it hard to resist the impression that Method verges on exploitation content, i.e., that it offers at times too much “fan service” for its target audience.

That audience may be female, as evidenced by the fact that in Method two actors appear in the roles of Yevgeniya’s university colleagues who followed her into the police and who vie there for her favour – Makar Zaporozhsky as her “good,” conventional and “nerdy” colleague who tries to do everything by the book, and Aleksandr Petrov as the “bad” playboy. Both characters are underdeveloped, i.e., it is easy to imagine that the writers were saving them for a second season, but overdid it a little.

When this is combined with a somewhat melodramatic and entirely predictable finale, which includes the obligatory cliffhanger for a continuation (which occurred in two seasons, aired in 2020 and 2025, respectively), it becomes quite difficult to give Method the highest ratings. On the other hand, this is not only an interesting but also a compelling series, for which it is quite easy to imagine it receiving non‑Russian remakes, or bringing to Russian television production what the Nordic noir brought to their Scandinavian counterparts.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

(Note: The text in the original Croatian version was posted here.)

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