Chekhov and Co. (Season 1)

Chekhov and Co. (1998) is a Russian anthology series adapting Anton Chekhov's short stories, available to watch online on iFILM. Thirty self-contained tales across ten episodes, each a miniature play built from a single Chekhov story.

One episode plays as comedy, the next as quiet drama: a clerk paralyzed before his boss, an awkward confession, a wedding glimpsed from the outside, an ordinary evening that suddenly reveals a whole life. The series was made by the Moscow Art Theatre troupe for the company's centenary, so the screen is full of its stage actors — Oleg Yefremov, Alexander Kalyagin, Boris Shcherbakov, Elena Panova and Sergei Sazontyev among them.

Three directors — Zinovy Roizman, Dmitri Brusnikin and Yuri Berdnikov — split the work and land that rare thing: Chekhov played lightly and precisely, with no museum reverence. A fine way in if you'd rather meet the writer through performance than on the page. Stream Chekhov and Co. (1998) online on iFILM.