Vladimir ★★★★½
Throughout this deliciously unchecked comic-drama, Rachel Weisz’s unnamed protagonist – let’s call her the Professor, for her position in the English department at a storied American university – breaks away from a screen to address the watching audience. The Professor is erudite, charming and confident, even as she worries that ageing into her 50s has dispelled her attractiveness; even as she sexually hungers for a younger colleague, Vladimir (Leo Woodall). It’s as if she’s the viewer’s best friend. Or perhaps we’re her jury.
Adapted by author Julia May Jonas from her 2022 novel of the same name, Vladimir is rife with this kind of juicy, uncomfortable choice. With a bravura performance by Weisz that keeps reframing your understanding of her character, the show offers up thought-provoking playfulness and pulse-raising carnality. It’s about many things, including the perverse spark that sets off creativity, generational conflict and the drollest of observations. One relevant issue: the Professor’s husband and fellow academic, John (John Slattery), is being investigated for his past affairs with students.
She, of course, knew about them. They had a mutual “arrangement”. One of the joys of this series is that these adults are smart and capable of infernal missteps; sensitive and willing to be selfish. They’re supposedly rounded people, starting to wonder if they have a price to pay; Gen X rebels who now need the protection of the system. The narrative is down in the muck of their collective pathologies but it’s too fleet and fearless to stand still and deliver a definitive judgement.
You might disagree with the social mores of the Professor and John, or Vladimir and his wife, hopeful academic Cynthia (Jessica Henwick), but it’s impossible to write them off. The eight half-hour episodes – so enjoyably concise – have a heightened pitch. Every time the Professor encounters Vladimir, snatches of her fantasies overwhelm reality. The feeling is so strong, she reasons, that she must act. The Professor, writing anew with horny propulsion, invokes “the spiritual imperative of desire” but the show makes even literary theory funny.
Slattery is a terrific foil for Weisz – John has a supermarket checkout scene involving Tess of the d’Urbervilles that is an all-timer – but Woodall also excels as the still baby-faced Vladimir, who is either completely unaware of the Professor’s intentions or secretly stoking them. There are interpretations, often contradictory and always watchable, for nearly every facet of this show, including the academic satire. It whisks you along, threatening calamity even as the Professor seeks nirvana. Binge Vladimir, then find someone to debate it with. This outstanding show deserves nothing less.
Vladimir streams on Netflix from March 5.
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Craig Mathieson is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.
