Londongrad: TV comedy shows London through eyes of its Russian inhabitants
Russian comedy detective series centres around a ‘fixing’ agency set up to troubleshoot problems for rich Russians in London

A Russian official’s daughter is on the loose in London, threatening to ruin her father’s “patriotic” image and impending government promotion. Meanwhile, a young violin prodigy has been sent by pushy parents to play at the Royal Albert Hall, but all he really wants to do is visit Harry Potter sites. And a dubious Russian lawyer needs someone to sneak into a London office block and extract compromising files from the computers before police get hold of dirty business secrets.

It’s all in a day’s work for Misha Kulikov, the main character in the new Russian television show Londongrad, part comedy part detective series, which premieres on Russian television next month.

Kulikov runs a fixing agency to troubleshoot problems for rich Russians in London and the 16-part series will bring the lives of London’s huge Russian community into focus for the domestic television audience. Exiled or emigrated from the motherland, they are not quite at home in London either.

Misha’s sidekicks are Alisa, the daughter of an oligarch politician, who has fled to London because “here nobody knows my name”, and Stepan, a middle-aged, sunflower-seed munching Russian from the provinces, who turns out to have Sherlock-like powers of deduction. In an implausible but amusing conceit, he drives around London in a battered Lada Zhiguli...