Pest! (Seasons 1–2)

"Pest!" (2020) is a Russian comedy series streaming online on iFILM — a medieval quarantine satire released, rather aptly, during a real one.

The fictional town of Nischburg is locked inside a castle while plague rages outside. The executioner has gone remote, carrying out sentences through a slot in the wall. Pecheneg raiders still attack but now wear protective masks. And the Messenger who delivered the outbreak news is stuck in lockdown with everyone else, sharing all the inconveniences he announced. Directors Baybulat Batulla and Andrei Bogatyrev cast Maksim Lagashkin, Zoya Berber and Vyacheslav Chepurchenko in the ensemble.

The joke that keeps landing: bureaucratic absurdity, contradictory rules and collective bewilderment look exactly the same in a fourteenth-century castle as they did in 2020. Stream "Pest!" online on iFILM (18+).