Topi

The main characters are a guy who is clearly based on Pavel Durov, then there is a tabloid reporter, a Chechen girl who runs away from unwanted marriage arrangement, a girl from religious family whose sister just died in a bike accident...and one more girl who is a sexy cute type. All these different types come together to go for a trip to visit a mysterious monastery in God-knows-where place somewhere in Russia of course.

This Russian gloomier and much less entertaining version of American TV show LOST is packed with unlikeable main characters played by mediocre actors and propaganda of Russian Orthodox Church. The events don't make any sense. The finale doesn't offer any resolution. The episodes just drag on with boring dialogues that have no point. The characters often talk to each other in confrontational manner and constantly use explicit language, and often tell each other to g... f....themselves. It is supposed to be edgy and cool but instead comes off redundant and tedious. The show is pretending to have a deeper meaning; it is some sort of allegory or a metaphor for Russia as this place of mystery wrapped in enigma but this legend is getting old.

Topi at first seems to be an intrusive series that decided to show the mystical life of the Russian hinterland. The first series decently nudge the atmosphere and mysticism. But the actions are so prolonged, instead of 7 episodes there should be 4 maximum. The plot begins to sag closer to the middle. The ending does not explain anything at all, half of the storylines are torn. The final has no logical explanation at all. Dmitry Glukhovsky wrote the script for the series, Kinopoisk HD advertised it. And it turned out a very medium-quality series in which you can cancel except for the bad acting of the main characters.

Well that was complete waste of time... boring, bad acting and storyline of 70s mexican sope opera.

Somewhat familiar genre tropes help to get through the first few episodes, while the plot gets going. Unfortunately, the further I went into Topi, the more captivating yet confused everything became.

Some of it feels like allusions to Bulgakov, yet the explicit scenes I still found over the top and not adding much to the story.

The ending left most of the storylines hanging, which was sadly quite predictable (or predetermined, if you will).

Don't regret the time spent watching this, mostly due to compelling performances from the cast (Max, Sonya and the police captain, to name a few) and a great setting.

The first couple of episodes are not extremely satisfying and rather confusing, but the remaining parts are amazing. The strongest components of the show are definitely actors and environment setup. Can't name another product which resembles the story or visual approaches of depicting it. However as for me it is slightly similar to the "Survival game" and "Call-center" captured earlier by the "TNT" channel production group. Didn't really liked the music, but fortunately is not played much along the series. The ending is pretty banal and dissatisfying. As for me it could be more explicit, interesting, logical and systemic. A lot of questions remained unanswered and many references as well as eccentric details of plot seem to be hanging without any clear purpose even after the last episode.