Comrade Detective is an American buddy cop series created by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. The show follows the premise of popular US action/cop-buddy films and television shows from the 1980s and presents the episodes as a fictional lost Romanian television show commissioned by the Communist Party to promote a communist worldview during the Cold War. Every episode was filmed in Romania using local actors and then dubbed into English as part of the effect.[1] It was released on Amazon Prime Video on August 4, 2017.
Channing Tatum and Jon Ronson present the show as if it were an actual influential Romanian television show from the 1980s. Produced by the Romanian communist government, it served as a device to promote a communist worldview opposed to Western capitalism and imperialism during the Cold War. Lost over the years, producers recently found surviving copies of the episodes. With the help of the fictional Romanian Film Preservation Society they have restored the episodes and dubbed them into English.
Within the show hard-boiled but troubled Bucharest police detective Gregor Anghel and his partner respond to a drug bust against the orders of their Captain. This results in a man in a Ronald Reagan mask killing his partner in front of him. Anghel, along with his new partner from the countryside, Iosif Baciu, must solve his partner's murder. In doing so, they uncover an insidious western plot to indoctrinate Romanian society with capitalism and religion.
Each character is portrayed by a Romanian actor, as well as an English-language voice actor. The show was first filmed using Romanian actors speaking Romanian. Actors then over-dubbed every role in English.[1]
When first conceiving the series, executive producer Channing Tatum asked the creators to bring him the worst ideas they could think of, with the reasoning "When you try to find something that is not working, you figure out what's cool about it, and you can find some really hidden gems."[2] Gatewood and Tanaka pitched a satire series that spoofed Communist propaganda from the 1980s. The two had become fascinated with Soviet propaganda television after seeing a mid-1980s PBS documentary on Soviet broadcasts.[3] They initially looked into dubbing over real Eastern Bloc television shows but realized it would be easier to make their own show rather than procure the rights.[4]
The series takes inspiration from the Czechoslovakian show Thirty Cases of Major Zeman.[2] They also took inspiration from the idea that growing up, American 1980s movies like Red Dawn served as both entertainment and propaganda.[2] It also took inspiration from the East German series Polizeiruf 110 and the American film Lethal Weapon.[5] By making the propaganda and inaccuracies obvious to a western audience, they hoped to make the subtle nature of modern propaganda more clear.[2] Tanaka stated that the goal was to create the inverse Soviet equivalent of the type of Russian-villain entertainment common in 1980s America.[5]
Episodes were initially written in English before being translated into Romanian. The shows were filmed in Romania with local cast.[6] Other than the director of photography, writers and director, the entire cast and crew were locally recruited in Romania.[3] The English-language actors were only cast after the series had been filmed and edited.[6]
Comrade Detective received mostly positive reactions from critics. Rotten Tomatoes indicated that 82% of critics gave the series a positive review.[7] On Metacritic the series received a score of 66 out of 100 based on 12 critics.[8]
Ben Travers of IndieWire gave the show a positive review, calling it a sharp satire. He focused in on the show's goal of deconstructing propaganda, claiming, "They're not simply here to make you laugh. They're not here to upset you. They're here to make you think differently and enjoy your time doing it. By that gauge, Comrade Detective is a roaring success. By the basic metric of thoroughly engaging television, it's still a winner."[4]
James Poniewozik of The New York Times gave it a less enthusiastic review, claiming that the show committed too much to its initial joke and ran too long. He concluded, "It's a brilliant idea. But it's not much more than an idea."[9]