Shuler (Season 1)

Shuler (2013) is a Russian-Ukrainian crime drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Eduard Parri and set in Soviet Odessa in the 1980s.

Kostik Voloshin's official title is junior researcher at a Moscow institute. His real job is cards — small cons, card sharping, anything that pays toward the one goal that matters: get out of the Soviet Union and take his mother to join his father, who has been living abroad for years. Odessa is where the money is, and also where his childhood catches up with him: old friends, local heavies, and a journalist named Maya he was not planning to fall for. Anton Feoktistov and Olga Lerman lead the cast.

The Odessa of this series is warm and treacherous in equal measure — Parri shoots it like a city that rewards you just long enough to lower your guard. Kostik can read a room full of gamblers, but keeps misjudging his own life. Stream Shuler (2013) online on iFILM.