On July 31, the crime drama "The Surgeon" about the black market for human organ transplantation will premiere on the online cinemas IVI and START. The topic is new and still unexplored in the Russian series industry, making it all the more interesti...

Ilya Ermolov ("Classmates", "Golden Bottom") has already, in a sense, filmed a series about heart transplantation – last year the second season of "13th Clinical" was released, which became a prequel to the first season. By the way, that very fake heart from the mystical hospital helped the creative team convince the producers that the filming of "The Surgeon" (the previous more telling title "Predators") must definitely take place.

Watching the "predator-prey" game is always intriguing, especially since the synopsis directly states that in the proposed circumstances, it is extremely difficult for the characters to remain human, and all that remains is to choose who to be – a victim or a predator.

In the first episode titled "Escape", we immediately meet the main character Sergei (Sergei Gilyov) – the very surgeon who escaped from prison. What crime he committed is yet to be discovered; as the plot unfolds, viewers will be able to build several guesses, although Sergei himself states that he was "set up". Gilyov is good at playing characters "on the edge" – seemingly a bad guy, but at certain moments he evokes sympathy.

It would seem that the characters can be clearly divided into villains and saviors, but that has long been uninteresting to anyone.

Although the authors still do not shy away from using old tried-and-true techniques: they must show female breasts in an intimate scene, and the woman herself mistakes rape for rough sex, which she, of course, enjoys. On the other hand, the scene is artistically justified – it is an allegory of the forced sale of parts of one's body. People "voluntarily" sell their organs because there is no other way to earn a large sum of money. Nevertheless, one can always come up with more original ways to highlight the problem.

Deals with conscience are made here by almost everyone, except for the independent journalist Marina (Anna Zavtur), who has nothing to lose but her life. This gives her courage, makes her character strong and bright. One wants to follow such a heroine in exploring the proposed world. It's a pity that she is given not so much screen time.

It is not yet clear what the main heroine Yulia (Marina Vorozhishcheva), who involuntarily becomes Sergei's companion, will turn out to be.

The second episode "Market" introduces viewers in more detail to the characters behind the illegal transplantation. Mikhail Khuranov as the Predator is, as always, taciturn, but the texture that filmmakers routinely use for all their marginal characters plays for him. I would like someone to break the system and give this actor a role in which he can truly spread his wings and show his talent. There is a wonderful example of Maxim Stoyanov in the film "The Alien".

Visually, over two episodes, there was only one bright spot – the scene of the food market, the ghetto of migrants, which seemed to have moved here from the Shortparis video "Scary". In contrast to the cold color correction, which is typical for crime thrillers, it sticks in the memory more strongly.

According to the laws of the genre, even a neutral ending is almost impossible in such stories, but even knowing this, one still wants to continue watching this dark universe and now guess not the maniac, but the true motives of the characters.