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Sex and the City for liberated Muscovites
May 26, 2004
Russia is about to launch its own version of the hit US television show. Tom
Parfitt reports from Moscow.
Russian television has cast aside romantic tradition in favour of earthier
entertainment: its own version of the hit US television show Sex and the City.
Inspired by the popularity of dubbed episodes of the show, Russia's NTV
commercial channel has launched Balzakovskiy Vozrast (The Balzac Age), a 12-
part romantic comedy featuring four single Muscovite women "a little beyond 30"
and their trials and tribulations in love.
Almost 20 years after a prim and anonymous matron from Leningrad made headlines
around the world by declaring, during a live television link-up with the US,
that "there is no sex in the Soviet Union", the show is targeting a new kind of
sassy Russian woman.
Russian women, once stereotyped as tractor drivers and ruddy-faced peasants,
are today more likely to sport Gucci and Prada than overalls and print dresses.
According to official statistics, they are earning more and marrying later, and
the divorce rate is rising.
The show's name was inspired by the French writer Honore de Balzac, who wrote
that women over 30 were "the greatest ladies in Paris". Trailers show the four
lead characters striking poses, arguing about sex and tumbling into bedrooms
with their suitors.
A spokesman for NTV said: "After the resounding success of Sex and the City
throughout Russia, it became clear that our fellow countrywomen's search for
true love and their funny dialogue are closer and dearer to viewers than those
of their prototypes overseas."
Alika Smekhova, who plays Sonya - a glamorous "professional widow" who marries
rich, older men in pursuit of their inheritance - said the show was aimed at a
new generation. "Russian women are changing, becoming more independent. Moscow
is a normal European capital now," she said. "Ten years ago, people imagined
that only a prostitute would sit in a restaurant by herself. That would be a
wild thought now."
The role of the angst-ridden columnist Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica
Parker in the American series, is taken by Yulia Menshova, a former talkshow
host. She plays Vera, a psychoanalyst who narrates the ups and downs of her
girlfriends' love lives.
Maksim Stishov, the screenwriter, said the idea for a no-holds-barred,
all-woman comedy that would also appeal to men first entered his head five
years ago, but "the audience was not ready for that kind of openness then". He
said: "Sex and the City prepared the ground for talking about relationships
between men and women more freely, from a less traditional point of view."
"I don't think there is any problem in adapting the Sex and the City formula
for a Russian audience," said Alexandra Rykova, 29, a single PR manager. "Men
are cretins all over the world."
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