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Amazon Prime’s new action-comedy Comrade Detective premiered on Friday, and if you haven’t watched it yet, you’re missing out on the most ridiculous period piece of the year. Styled similarly to the propaganda shows produced by the Romanian communist regime during the 1980s, the series follows two detectives as they investigate the murder of a fellow officer. The entire season was filmed on location in Bucharest with a Romanian cast and then dubbed in English in post-production. Yes, you read that right. Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jenny Slate, and more big-name American actors voice the roles of Romanian citizens trapped in the plot of a deranged Ronald Reagan-mask-wearing-serial killer. Yes, you read that right, too.
If you’ve already blown through the six episodes in Comrade Detective’s first season, you’re probably looking for a way to get your Cold War propaganda fix. Well, have no fear, Netflix is here to satisfy all your Eastern bloc needs.
Hidden within the vast Netflix library lies Chuck Norris vs. Communism, a documentary about the underground film smuggling industry of 1980s Romania. Directed by Romanian filmmaker Ilinca Calugareanu, the film features in-depth interviews with the major players in the industry, particularly Irina Nistor, the woman who dubbed over 3,000 American films into Romanian before the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s communist regime in 1989. At the time, communist leaders had banned all Western entertainment, and the act of smuggling, translating, and distributing American films could lead to serious jail time for anyone involved.
But as Chuck Norris explains through interviews with Romanians who grew up watching these illegal films, many felt that movies like Missing in Action, Back to the Future, and Pretty Woman were the only way to learn about a forbidden culture and escape the oppression of communist rule. “It was like a drug. Like escaping from prison,” Nistor says of her underground work as a translator. Chuck Norris films, especially, provided young kids with a sense that they could be heroes like their favorite movie stars, and this sentiment led to the increased social involvement that eventually toppled the communist regime.
Like Comrade Detective, Chuck Norris vs. Communism dramatizes ’80s Bucharest (although the clothes in the show are much flashier), and it’s eerie how similar the two look. Both the series and the documentary have the same drab gray color scheme and take full advantage of filming throughout the varied Bucharest landscape. There’s a scene in Comrade Detective that so closely mirrors Chuck Norris that for a second you’ll think you’re watching the same thing. The only difference is that, in true Peak TV fashion, Amazon’s scene ends with a massive four-car explosion.
Chuck Norris answers Comrade Detective’s satire with a sincerely moving documentary about the power of film on the individual and the nation. Where the series spoofs propaganda, the film asks viewers to imagine a world where propaganda is all you have. When viewed together, it seems as if the Comrade Detective producers took Chuck Norris vs. Communism’s question to heart and created this weird, ridiculous show to remind us of the amazing things movies and TV can do that propaganda cannot.
