Pub "13 Chairs" (Season 1)

Pub "13 Chairs" (1966) is a Soviet television comedy institution you can watch online on iFILM — 133 episodes of variety entertainment broadcast on Central Television from January 1966 to October 1980.

Every episode takes place in the same Polish café, where a regular cast of recurring characters — Pan Director, Pan Professor, Zuzya, Dzyunya and company — perform sketches, monologues, and musical numbers. No ongoing plot, no serious subjects: just the reliable pleasures of a well-drilled ensemble doing what it does best. The performers came from the Moscow Theatre of Satire: Olga Aroseva, Spartak Mishulin, Mikhail Derzhavin, Valentina Sharykina, and Boris Runge. Georgy Zelinsky directed the bulk of the run. Filming stopped in October 1980 when the political crisis in Poland made a Polish-themed Soviet programme politically untenable.

Fifteen years on air made this the defining comedy format of Soviet television — warm, light, unhurried, with just enough exotic Polish colouring to feel a little foreign without being threatening. If you want to understand what a Soviet family watched on a Friday night in 1970, this is where you start. Watch Pub "13 Chairs" online on iFILM.