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In the first episode of Amazon’s new comedy Comrade Detective, Detective Gregor Anghel (voiced by Channing Tatum) insists that America’s goal of spreading freedom and democracy amounts to nothing more than “spreading greed and gonorrhea.”
It’s a colorful way to describe Cold War tensions, but Gregor’s statement fits squarely into the Comrade Detective purview: dramatize the conflict between communist Romania and the capitalist United States in the most ridiculous way possible, and do so with a heavy hand–or maybe with an Iron Fist?
Channing Tatum stars as the voice, not the body, of Gregor Anghel, a detective with the Bucharest PD investigating the death of his partner Nikita Ionesco (voiced by Saturday Night Live’s Putin-in-residence Beck Bennett). Joseph Gordon-Levitt co-stars as the voice of Detective Iosef Baciu, Nikita’s longtime friend, who joins Gregor in the search for the killer. The series was shot on location in Bucharest with Romanian actors, and the voices of American actors were dubbed in English during post-production. If you’re confused, here’s a summary: you’ll see what looks like an Eastern European B-movie set in the ’80s, but you’ll hear Channing Tatum remind someone over dinner that “bean soup is a delicacy.”
Amazon’s action-comedy also contains a high-concept twist that viewers are likely to miss if they’re not paying close attention. The basic premise behind the show is that Comrade Detective was actually a popular Romanian show in the 80s, and after years of searching, producers have restored the show’s original master copies and dubbed them. The series opens with Tatum and author Jon Ronson holding a screening of the “celebrated six-part 1980s Romanian TV series.” To hit home the point, Tatum and Ronson appear at the beginning of two other episodes to discuss the impact the series had on filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick. The two do a great job of convincing viewers of their sincerity: if you started Comrade Detective without knowing anything about it, you would probably believe that it was filmed in socialist Romania and dubbed thirty years later.
The disconnect between what we see and what we hear is the show’s clearest comedic angle. But the true strength of Comrade Detective comes not from its obvious spoofiness, but from its commitment to the larger story of communism vs. capitalism. From the beginning, the creators tie the murder mystery to the Cold War struggle, but it isn’t until the final episode that the whodunit actually becomes the most interesting part of the show. Until that point, the show relies on dramatizing the Eastern-Western ideological conflict to keep audiences engaged, and it does a solid job of doing so in an entertaining way.
The first few episodes are divided into neat anti-capitalist themed episodes: one on the greed of American business practices, another on the hypocrisy of Western religion, the next on the reprehensible American practice of cultural propaganda (yes, it’s hilarious to hear communists talk about the dangers of propaganda). The show’s best jokes come from the earlier episodes, and I give it about four days until these zingers take over Reddit. A small selection of favorites:
“You know what the bible is. It’s my favorite work of fiction”
“What poison is more toxic than organized religion?”
“How you suppose someone even gets wrapped up in all this bullshit?”
The last one really applies to all situations, so use it at your leisure.
But no matter how creative the zingers, Comrade Detective gets caught up in its commitment to diss capitalism at all costs. The situations the characters are placed in to tell these jokes are ridiculous at best and overly contrived at worst. Yes, American greed is a scourge on society, but do you really need a Monopoly game to illustrate your point? The show drags in its mid-season episodes as the creators become increasingly heavy-handed in their metaphors. Many viewers may want to scream, “We get it! America is bad! Now please get on with the murder mystery.”
That being said, Comrade Detective succeeds in being what it sets out to be: a campy recreation of an Eastern bloc propaganda show. It’s fun, for sure. And with an all-star cast featuring voice work from Jenny Slate, Nick Offerman, Chloe Sevigny, Mahershala Ali, Daniel Craig, and many more, it’s worth the watch (it doesn’t hurt that there’s only six episodes, either). At times, it feels like the series has bitten off more than it can chew, but the amazing voice work, tongue-in-cheek jokes, and high-concept idea provide a great foundation for improvement in future seasons. Here’s to hoping that Amazon gives us another opportunity to peek behind Comrade Detective’s Iron Curtain.
