What if the worst people paid YOU to pull the trigger? Morally bankrupt, legally fascinating.
7.555 minSeason 1 • Episode 8
LatestPrison doctor Petya extracts from the Doctor the recipe for a lethal cocktail he used to eliminate his victims. In exchange, the death-row inmate is transferred to a hospital for treatment—so the Doctor will live a while longer. The prison warden spots Japanese visitors in town and offers them the chance to kill one of the condemned prisoners, with generous payment. Meanwhile, they need to deal with Kostya once and for all. The comrades' choice falls on Sasha, who had a good relationship with Volkov. Sasha hesitates to deliver the fatal injection and turns to Natasha for help. If Kostya is eliminated, the illegal business inside the prison walls can thrive without any obstacles.
In the mid-90s, when the death penalty was still allowed, a new employee appeared in the special purpose prison. Like his colleagues, Kostya will have to carry out death sentences. But he has a special view of justice. After meeting with the father of one of the victims, Kostya realizes that it is close people who have the right to carry out punishment. Besides, you can make good money on it. For example, they never dreamed of the kind of money that a mother offered for the murder of her daughter's rapist.
Acting
Yankovsky's dead-eyed stillness says more than any monologue.
Direction
Gligorov finds horror in fluorescent-lit hallways and paperwork.
Writing
The premise is so wrong you'll keep watching to understand why.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Russia's 1996 moratorium on capital punishment created a real bureaucratic ghost industry—Gligorov found fiction in the archival shadows of actual executioners suddenly out of work.
The series deliberately mirrors 90s Russian crime films but strips away the romanticism; there's no cool here, only fluorescent lights and the smell of industrial cleaner.
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