Servant of the People on Netflix: 8 things you don’t know about the series that got Zelensky elected

You probably know this, but Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian and actor before becoming President of the Ukrainian Republic in 2019. Certainly Ronald Reagan was actor before becoming president of the United States, but the meteoric rise of Zelensky on the political spectrum has surprised many. The young republic of Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, but this former Soviet republic has suffered from dodgy elections and the orange revolution (2004), the economic crisis of 2008 which devalued their currency like never before, the imprisonment of opponent Yulia Tymoshenko at the same time as the Euro football tournament in 2012, the Maidan revolution (2014), then the flight of President Yanukovych and finally the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Dombass. All this in 10 years.

From fiction to reality…

In the midst of this series of events, the series Servant of the People (Слуга народу) was released in 2015. The story: a professor of integrity and critic of the leaders is filmed without his knowledge by one of his students who broadcasts one of his impassioned speeches on the Internet. The latter made the buzz and our professor managed to stand for election thanks to crowdfunding. Against all odds, he becomes President of the Republic, but the hardest part is yet to come since he will have to thwart the traps set by the oligarchs who take a dim view of the arrival of this candid President whom they cannot control. . The sequel will be written in the history books since in front of the success of the series, Zelensky will run for the 2019 elections and will win against the outgoing president and rich owner of the factories of Roshen chocolatePetro Poroshenko.

Have you seen the series? Perhaps you are still ignoring two or three things in our list…

8 things you don’t know about “Servant of the People”

1/ Season 3, which takes place in the future in 2049 in kyiv, was broadcast just before the first round of the 2019 presidential election. According to some observers, the series favored the qualification in the second round of Zelensky. Imagine Emmanuel Macron in More beautiful life or in Scenes of households with Bridget.

2/ Originally broadcast on the Ukrainian channel 1+1, the series was then exported via Arte and has been available on Netflix in full since May 2022 in 33 countries. Many countries have also broadcast the series on television: United Kingdom, Romania, Greece, Italy, Tunisia, Brazil, etc.

3/ A sequel to the first season was released in cinemas in 2016. Season 2 of the series, released in 2017, uses sequences from the film to ensure the continuity of the story.

4/ In the series, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is a former actor. Reality has surpassed fiction.

5/ Zelensky’s political party is called Servant of the People and when the victory was announced, the president-elect entered his campaign headquarters with the credits of the series playing in the background.

6/ The Russian channel TNT broadcast the pilot in 2019, but a joke about Vladimir Putin was cut. When he becomes president, the character is offered a watch. His co-worker told him: “Do you know who wears a Hublot? Cheese fries. » The president responds “Putin, Hublot?” which is a reference to an anti-Putin chant and sounds like ” Poutine khuylo ! (“Putin, head of b…”)

7/ Broadcast on television and intended for a wide audience, there are “beeps” to hide swear words.

8/ The series is 100% Ukrainian, but the characters speak Russian. It must be said that even if schooling is done in Ukrainian and more and more people speak the language of their country, the majority of people understand Russian and a very large number are of Russian mother tongue, especially in the capital where the series happens. When it aired in Ukraine, there were still Ukrainian subtitles also available on Netflix.