I watched the hyped series “Patient Zero”. Honest review

Recently, the third series of the new series “Patient Zero” from Kinopoisk was released.

This is half of the season, so you can already form some impression of the project. To be honest, the feelings are very contradictory.

We have already seen the novelty and are in a hurry to share our impressions.

The story of how HIV appeared in the USSR

This story, as we have become accustomed to lately, is “based on real events.” This die flaunts literally before each series, reminding that everything really happened.

From that arises a lot of questions about the plot itself. But I don’t really want to dig in with them, because it’s done very well.

The viewer is given two parallel storylines: about the scientist Dmitry Goncharov, who is trying to open the eyes of officials to the HIV problem in the country, and also about the doctor Kirsan Ayushev. The latter works in a children’s hospital, where the first infections with the disease were discovered.

The heroes join forces and turn to the media to publicize the current situation. But things are not going as smoothly as we would like.

In fact, the series tells about how the authorities tried to hide the presence of HIV in the USSR. A tragedy on a national scale about how negligently they treated the problem and tried to ignore it.

The presentation of the material is similar to Chernobyl from HBO, it is a heavy drama about the problems of society, politics and individual destinies. True, often the authors of the series overdramatize and exaggerate what is happening.

Some scenes even look stupid, for example, with the arrival of Goncharov to the military unit, where the entire company “slept” with a former colleague. It is clear that this is done to better understand the viewer’s problem, but it looks at least ridiculous, which makes it less desirable to believe in what is happening.

In the meantime, the scale of what happened is being shown directly to us: across the country there are only five laboratories that are engaged in HIV research. And every day the number of cases is only growing, and the authorities simply don’t have real numbers. So they can’t understand the gravity of the situation.

Frustrates only a variety of locations. Many of them often are repeated, and extras in some scenes do not seem to change. In general, the era itself is transmitted reliably and accurately recreated, there are no questions about it.

The most important question arises precisely to the script. If in Chernobyl you were looking forward to each new episode and could not tear yourself away, then in the case of Patient Zero it works the other way around – nothing catches the eye here, there are no truly “living” characters, there is no clear and interesting story, for which you want to return as soon as possible.

Moreover, the same “Chernobyl” forced to study the issue outside the context of the series, and for the sake of “Patient Zero” you don’t even want to google at least a little. The story turned out to be insipid and too “sterile”, it is licked so much that you don’t want to find fault with anything at all. This creates a feeling of emptiness and missed opportunities.

The main characters also have some questions. It can be seen that they really try to play their roles, but personally I did not notice a global change in emotions from Askar Ilyasov, who played the doctor Kirsan Ayushev. His character is generally poorly written in my opinion. Yes, he has personal experiences and his own story, but he lacks some kind of spark, he does not catch on, and you want to skip the scenes with his participation as soon as possible. Sometimes it seems that the supporting actors do their job better.

The era of collapse

By itself, the story about the spread of HIV is gradually fading into the background, and they are trying to show the audience exactly how they were looking for that same zero patient that started it all.

History lacks stars from the sky, but quite plausibly (with reservations) shows how it was decades ago. It is the era itself that captivates, it is interesting to follow the production, you can feel great attention to detail.

Looks interesting gluing old Soviet footage with real-time shooting. This allows you to feel a little more like the time. And sometimes these cuts look like transitions between locations, as they did in old series with small budgets.

I have no questions about the musical component either. We have been able to work with this for many years, especially in terms of cinema about the USSR.

Watchable but nothing special

Personally, I got the feeling that more money was invested in the promotion of the series than in the project itself.

This is a good series, but it does not look like some kind of global masterpiece, while periodically getting bored, has a sufficient number of boring and “empty” scenes. What makes him want to look further.

I am sure that the novelty will definitely find its audience. Too bad it’s not me.