This series was a fantastic find and it shows the deep understanding of the human psyche that is so visible in Russian art.
I was afraid the show would descend into another variation of "teen detective" like 13 Reasons Why, for example. The fear was totally misguided.
S'parta is full of complicated and believable characters, each with their own internal motivations. None of them feel like they exists just to direct the plot or other characters into one way or another. There are no clear-cut heroes or villains to be found. They all have a reason to think they are doing the right thing, but still people end up dead.
The viewer is sucked into liking some characters, empathizing with them, and later finding out several reasons why not to. Alexander Petrov does a fantastic job portraying the charismatic and enigmatic character of Michail Barkovskiy, the leader of his school class. It's simply impossible not to like him at first, but as the series progresses the viewer starts to question whether he really is such a "good" person or not. Looking at vile authoritarian leaders in world history people always ask: "How did everyone get sucked into that? I wouldn't have!". S'parta examines this theme with great understanding.
The show uses a lot of temporal jumps between the past, present and future but manages to somewhat obfuscate which one is which without making it confusing. Along with the harsh visuals and surroundings, together with the music used in the show it all serves to give it a strong sense of determinism - an unstoppable domino of cause and effect that Igor Andreevich Kryuko (Artyom Tkachenko) tries to unravel. Portraying a multi-layered, gifted but troubled detective, Tkachenko is excellent in his role.
It's very rare to find a TV show using a lot of young actors without having at least some bad performances mixed in, but in all honesty I found none of that. I am absolutely sure many of the actors and actresses in the show will have a long future in Russian film. Like always, I watched it in original language with subtitles. If you watch it dubbed, you can only blame yourself for that. You wouldn't give a serious thought to a dubbed song either, would you?
All in all, if you are able to watch a show using subtitles or happen to understand Russian, I highly recommend this show. If you happen to be an action-addict, S'parta is not what you are looking for. I've never rated anything as 10/10 and will not do so now either, but I do believe this to be the best series I've seen all year, and I've seen a lot.
