1 out of 5

Produced by: Sreda

Gritty.  That’s undoubtedly what Russia’s ‘The Method’ is going for, what with its bloody, vicious, serial-killings-of-the-week to resolve, and its reliance on sex and skin.

Okay, fine: you have Russian production company Sreda behind it, which has been successful in its adaptation of concepts from UK and US TV, so I can accept the assumption that this veneer is a requirement for people to watch.  And considering the company has had several shows – including this one – picked up by Netflix, then perhaps we can even say this assumption is valid.  And there’s always the possibility of something quality to exist beneath this stylized coat.

In the opening episode of The Method, a party-goer – friend to recent law school graduate Eseniya (Paulina Andreeva), is killed in a particularly Saw-esque goofy trap manner.  Mysterious detective Meglin (Konstantin Khabensky) – mysterious, except that everyone seems to know him – bursts onto the scene, though seemingly waiting for the victim to die, and then makes a big deal of pointing the killer out within a few seconds.  Amazing!  Amazing to point out the one older man in the crowd, who wasn’t screaming about the body on the floor, and who was sweating and grinning at the sight!  And such is the quality of the detective work the ensues, as Meglin takes Eseniya under his wing and teacher her his “Method” of sneering at people who do their jobs, making wild assumptions because he can ‘get in the minds of the killers,’ and then waiting for more people to die so he can deduce the murderer from the most obvious of obviousness.

It seems wrong to rag on a show, sometimes, when I admittedly watch it all the way through; The Method, though, is one of those things where you swear you’re missing something, and so I kept watching to figure out what it was.  Answer: twas nothing.  What I’ve described above is pretty much all there is, with Eseniya getting in on the game of sneering at people and making either guesses from nothing or declarations from ‘clues’ that one might find amongst the offenses of ‘world’s dumbest criminals’.

The show attempts to weave in extras via a frame of Eseniya being interviewed about Meglin’s less policeful aspects, while she grumps and drinks vodka from an apparently bottomless flask, and an encroaching illness of Meglin’s, which apparently needs to be ‘treated’ at a mental facility – a location which takes up some plot space in the show’s latter half, and is host to all sorts of 80s and 90s ‘insane asylum’ stereotypes.  Also: Eseniya’s mother was murdered, and we’re dripped clues about that at the most pathetically spaced out intervals (i.e. it only matters every four episodes or so), and maybe all of these cases are connected by some kind of uber-killer?  …But that also comes and goes.  Meanwhile: a cool rock soundtrack when the killers are doing their things!  Wicked!

Andreeva offers up some really well-balanced performances in the moment, but the script, overall, gives her character very little rhyme and reason for doing what she does, or for not reacting to Meglin’s excesses.  Khabensky really just has to play an obnoxious prat, which he does well enough, but again, we’re not given much to convince us of his abilities.  The rundown locations are well chosen, and setting aside the exploitative nature of how the show is shot, it’s shot well.  But there’s really just nothing very redeeming about the series, lacking the gory creativity of, say, Hannibal, or consistency with its lore, or engaging cases.  Adding on top of it that R-rated veneer, and…  Yeah.  Not so great.