‘Gentleman in Moscow’ quite unlike anything else on TV
“A Gentleman in Moscow” is quite unlike anything else on television. Created by Ben Vanstone and largely directed by Sam Miller from the 2016 novel by Amor Towles, there’s nothing overtly radical about the production or plot, and elements of the story might remind viewers of Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” or Kay Thompson’s “Eloise” books. But in its tone and pacing is quite its own creature, at once romantic and controlled, somber and whimsical.
Heartbreaking, heartwarming, sometimes heart-stopping, and as much as anything the stage for a wonderful performance by its star, Ewan McGregor, it collects characters who are flush with emotion but don’t demonstrate it openly. The production, too, maintains that tension between feeling and restraint, which ultimately intensifies the feeling.
McGregor plays Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who, having returned to Russia from Paris in the wake of the 1917 revolution is saved from a firing squad by virtue of a famous “pre-revolutionary” poem that bears his name. “It is attributed to me, yes,” he tells his inquisitors. And so he is sentenced to lifetime house arrest in the Hotel Metropol, his place of residence, though he is moved from his suite into an attic room. (He’s allowed to eat in the restaurant and drink at the bar.)
That is the whole of the premise, really, and almost the series’ sole setting, as, from 1922 to 1958, with large tracts of time skipped over, characters come into and out of the Count’s small world — which, with its other rooms, and nooks and crannies, proves not such a small world after all.
Though he has fixed ideas about what constitutes proper behavior, the Count is not a snob, and forced to rely on himself, he becomes self-reliant. Being raised to appreciate life’s finer things will prove the basis for appreciating the simpler things. Though he has his dark moments, he will be pulled back from the brink and integrate himself into the downstairs life of the hotel without losing himself. Rather, he finds himself.
It’s a largely stable world these characters inhabit. While things change over the decades, life goes on. Which is not to say it isn’t a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Underpinning the intrigue is a love story, or stories, individual and collective. Among the Count’s more significant relationships are Anna Urbanova (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a movie star who swans in and out of the Metropol with her assistant, Olga (Anastasia Hille), and Mishka Mindich (Fehinti Balogun), a friend from college, now involved in revolutionary politics. Johnny
Harris plays Osip Glebnikov, a secret police officer of some depth; John Heffernan is Bishop, a loyal party member who has none, and will rise through the hotel’s ranks over the years. Beyond the state apparatus itself, he’s the series’ designated villain.
Most crucial to the overarching plot are two little girls left implicitly and explicitly in his care: Nina (Alexa Goodall), who knows every inch of the hotel and, later, Sofia (Billie Gadson, younger; Beau Gadsdon, older).
The series does not perfectly re-create the book. But the journey is the same, and the fanciful, almost fairy-tale atmosphere of the series matches the novel. The story is in no sense a petition for the return of the monarchy but contrasts Old World gentility with the heartlessness of the surveillance state, culture against the assassination of culture.
That oppressive presence means that as the series is subdued the tension never dissipates. That’s how it is when characters you come to love live under a shadow.