The State Counsellor (Season 1)

The State Counsellor (2005) is a Boris Akunin adaptation you can watch online on iFILM. On the night train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, General Khrapov is knifed in his compartment — the blade marked "BG", the calling card of a terrorist cell.

The case falls to Erast Fandorin (Oleg Menshikov), but the ambitious Prince Pozharsky (Nikita Mikhalkov) is chasing the same killers from another angle, and it's never clear who is helping whom. The story winds through 1890s Moscow — secret police, revolutionary cells, informers who switch sides for a price. The cast is stacked: Konstantin Khabensky, Vladimir Mashkov, Oleg Tabakov and Fyodor Bondarchuk.

Filipp Yankovsky treats the mystery as a moral trap rather than a whodunit: to do his duty, Fandorin gets pushed toward betrayals he can't stomach. Cold imperial palettes, a slowly tightening grip, and a final move that recolors everything before it. Stream The State Counsellor (2005) online on iFILM.