Proposed Circumstances (Season 1)

Proposed Circumstances (Предлагаемые обстоятельства, 2009) is a Russian detective series you can watch online on iFILM. At its heart is an odd pairing: a criminal investigator and a famous actress, Vera Strelnikova, who lends her skills to crack his cases.

Sharp eyes, quick instincts and a gift for making anyone open up turn Vera Nikolaevna into the perfect partner for a by-the-book detective. What pulls her into the work is personal — her daughter ends up tangled in the murder of a well-known director, Georgy Strunin. To clear the girl, the actress sets out to find the real killer, and that is where her craft pays off. She slips into the part, starts thinking like the culprit, and reads the scene from an angle ordinary police work never reaches.

Directed by Alexander Khvan, the show sits where the theater meets the crime squad, its main tool an actor's transformation rather than a gun. A good fit for fans of unhurried Russian whodunits built around a female sleuth. Stream Proposed Circumstances (2009) online on iFILM.