I find myself bored with a lot of the modern shows American gives us with the forced badass Mary Sue heroines and anachronistic diversity in historical eras where none of that was present... Plus often shows have very little plot and drag things out for a lot of episodes with little content.
Gogol is quite the opposite. I wish there was MORE of it! To make it easier to understand for western viewers, imagine Sleepy Hollow - the Tim Burton movie, not the terrible TV show that went nowhere, as usual - but set in 1800s tsarist Russia and what is now Ukraine, with grimy tough cossacks, charming rural villages, rickety wooden orthodox churches, unkempt local clerks and police officials, prim and proper aristocrats from St. Petersburg... It is all so authentic, you know?
For those who don't know, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was a russian novelist known for his bizarre, almost Kafka-esque writings, that often had an esotheric theme and incorporate a lot of local slavic legends and folklore. The Gogol of this show is quite similar to the real writer, but here working as a scribe and assistant to the police. He is pale and prone to fainting, and often sees strange visions that can, sometimes, reveal details about cases he should not know. He has a dark secret he is unaware of - he was stillborn and was given life through a dark deal his father struck with a noseless stranger (implied to be the Devil itself).
Gogol piques the interest of famous and eccentric investigator Guro, working for the Tsar's secret police. He takes Gogol to the ukranian cossack village of Dikanka, where strange murders of young women have been committed by a supernaturally strong dark Horseman. The investigations start to reveal more and more supernatural beings and happenings about Dikanka, as well as the village's past. Witches, rusalkas (water nymphs), warlocks, demons, curses... And for those familiar with the real Gogol's writings, they will recognize how each chapter actually cleverly uses one or more short stories of his as the basis for the plot, while continuing the ongoing story of the Horseman's murders.
We are introduced to many memorable and well acted characters in Dikanka - Binkh, the honest local policeman, suspicious of Gogol's strange connections to the events, Yakim, Gogol's faithful servant, the religious and loyal Vakula and his young daughter who has strange mystical insights into cases, and Lisa, the local noblewoman who lives with her reclusive husband, and with whom Gogol hopelessly falls in love with. But she is not the only woman in his life, as the stunningly beautiful Oksana, a daughter of a local miller who was drowned decades ago and came back as a rusalka/mavka, follows Gogol around invisibly, spying from mirrors, as he is the only one who can see her.
The story has a lot of surprises and twists, and as befitting a gothic dark tale that could almost be considered to be made by Hammer pictures, has a lot of blood and nudity too, but all done tastefully - not in the manner of say, Saw or HBO shows. It is done to set the gothic mood, no more or less than necessary.
I learned of this show - or rather, a set of 3 movies, as it is also aired - thanks to knowing about another adaptation of Gogol's short story, Viy, from 2014 (a movie I can also recommend). While Viy is also a used as a plot point in this show, I think the 2014 and 1967 movies portrayed that story better, since here the novice clergyman is just a guest character instead of being the focal point of the story. However, the church haunting scene is done extremely well in this show too, with the clever use of some glass.
Honestly, given the way this show ends, I could see them making further episodes later down the line, perhaps taking place in other locales in 19th century Russia. I for one, would welcome it!
