D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers (Season 1)

D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers (1979) — watch online on iFILM — is the Soviet adventure series that made Mikhail Boyarsky an icon no one has managed to replace. Director Georgy Yungvald-Khilkevich adapted Alexandre Dumas for television and made something that has outlasted nearly every other film of that decade in Russia.

A young Gascon arrives in Paris with three gold coins and a sword. Within days he is fighting duels and falling in with Athos, Porthos and Aramis. The real adversary is Cardinal Richelieu — Oleg Tabakov, cold and precise — with Milady, played by Margarita Terekhova, doing the damage that cannot be traced back to him.

The swordfights hold up, but Maxim Dunayevsky's songs are what made this impossible to shake — still hummed in Russia nearly fifty years later. Stream all episodes of D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers (1979) online on iFILM.