Split (Season 1)

Split (Раскол, 2011) is a Russian historical drama series you can watch online on iFILM. It travels back to the 17th century, when the Russian church tore in two and the fracture ran straight through thrones, monasteries and the great boyar families. Director Nikolay Dostal reconstructs one of the heaviest — and least familiar — turns in the country's past.

The story follows real people of the age. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and his son Fyodor. The Morozov brothers and the unbending noblewoman Feodosia Morozova. Patriarch Nikon, who set out to correct the rituals and the holy books, and those who read that correction as a betrayal of the faith — led by the fierce archpriest Avvakum. An argument over how to cross oneself and which texts to pray from hardens into exile, torture and the stake.

This is a long, unhurried period canvas: the costumes, the speech and the daily life of pre-Petrine Russia are recreated with real care. For anyone drawn to serious history with no modern gloss, and curious where the Old Believers came from, the series offers an unusually full answer. Stream Split online on iFILM.