Orlova and Aleksandrov (Season 1)

Orlova and Aleksandrov (2015) is a Russian biographical series you can watch online on iFILM, tracing the price behind the shine of the first Soviet movie-star couple.

To audiences, Lyubov Orlova (Olesya Sudzilovskaya) and Grigori Aleksandrov (Anatoly Bely) were success itself: their musical comedies were adored across the country, and by Stalin personally. Behind the polished front, though, came arts councils with a hundred notes on every picture, envious informers, years of OGPU surveillance and the constant dread of one wrong step. The show follows the pair across decades — from dizzying 1930s fame to the disorientation after the leader's death, when their dangerous but dependable protection from above suddenly vanished.

Director Vitaly Moskalenko frames it as a period drama about a love that survived under the weight of its era rather than because of it. The wide ensemble includes Andrei Smolyakov, Roman Madyanov, Yulia Rutberg and Evgeny Knyazev. One for viewers drawn to the hidden side of Soviet cinema and the fates of its stars. Stream Orlova and Aleksandrov online on iFILM.