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In The Spotlight
Luckily, there's always room in the traffic police for an emotionally disturbed, trigger-happy loner with a grudge.
By Anna Malpas
Published: May 8, 2008
They stand by the roadside in ill-fitting gray nylon, ignoring all traffic offenses that look unlikely to bring in any funds -- cars parked on pedestrian crossings, municipal trucks belching out carcinogens, state officials' cars breaking the sound barrier -- so that they can concentrate on stopping drivers for near-invisible violations and pocketing a few hundred rubles folded into their licenses. But you've got to love them, haven't you? Rossia television certainly thinks so, because it has started a new comedy-drama series on the lives of friendly neighborhood traffic policemen, named after their nickname, "Gaishniki."
The series, which started Monday, stars Sergei Astakhov as a maverick St. Petersburg policeman whose wife and child were killed by a car bomb after he tried to investigate the local drugs mafia. He is demoted to the traffic police, or GIBDD, after he goes round to the drug baron's house and takes him out, along with a few of his guards. Luckily, there's always room in the traffic police for an emotionally disturbed, trigger-happy loner with a grudge against the human race.
So far, so reminiscent of the "The Big Heat" and every other film noir. But Rossia doesn't want to alienate any of the thousands of traffic policemen watching, so it introduced some comedy elements, such as a jolly fat traffic policeman who is assigned to work alongside Astakhov's character. Yes, he takes bribes and has an implausibly large apartment for someone who earns 8,000 rubles per month, but he is a nice guy who makes his own moonshine -- with horse radish -- and has a plump wife who bakes pies for his lunch.
The first episode introduced a pretty implausible element -- Astakhov's character, also called Sergei, insisted straight away that he wouldn't take any bribes. "You shouldn't ever besmirch your reputation for money. You should only do it for the sake of justice," he said. It wasn't made clear how Sergei was planning to pay his rent on 8,000 rubles. Naturally, the fat policeman was not too happy about this, as apparently gaishniki always divvy up their loot at the end of the day. But he had his hands tied by a drugs-related subplot.
The fat policeman's son was forced into drug dealing after he crashed a friend's car and couldn't pay for the repairs. He left a bag of cocaine in the pocket of a dressing gown at home, and the scriptwriters had think up a way for Sergei to put his hand into said pocket. It wasn't easy, but they found one: Sergei discovered a bomb in a bag on the street, he ran with the bomb and threw it in the river. The explosion made him very wet, so he went to the fat policeman's apartment to get dry and drink some horse radish moonshine. And the only item of clothing that the fat policeman could find to fit him was his son's dressing gown.
Then things got even more absurd, with radio DJ Roman Trakhtenberg playing a drug baron with a tiny fluffy dog, which was not harmed during filming. Sergei ran around an abandoned warehouse in a camouflage vest and fended off machine-gun-wielding attackers with his puny GIBDD pistol.
Sadly, there wasn't much gaishnik on driver action in the first episode. But if Sergei keeps up his principled position, I really don't know how the makers are going to fill up the time. I mean, it rarely ever happens, but theoretically all that gaishniki do is take down drivers' details and give them a payment slip, which they have to take to a police station. Hardly the stuff of blockbuster drama.
Copyright © 2008 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
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May 8 - 15, 2008 
