A new drama series has recently been filmed in Estonia featuring Estonian poet Juhan Liiv as the main character. Set in the late 1800s, the well-read and modern-thinking Liiv forms a partnership with Peeter, a village policeman and veteran of the Russo-Turkish war, and together they solves crimes. Peeter makes use of the poet’s sharp senses to solve crimes too complex for his own simple logic. In the series Liiv becomes our eyes and ears to the curious habits of hygiene, sex, violence, superstition and social hierarchies of that era.
Storyline:
Juhan Liiv, an aspiring poet, is haunted by personal tragedy and professional misfortune. The over-sensitive young man is beginning to suffer with mental illness. He escapes the harsh city life and heads towards his parents’ poor farmstead in the countryside. Against his will, Juhan gets drawn into several dangerous adventures. He becomes an unlikely detective helping to solve gruesome crimes.
The series takes us back to the time of the multi-cultural Russian Empire. The local population of Estonia is caught between two mighty powers. Nominally under Russian rule, and by the iron-fisted German nobility that has governed the Baltic region since medieval times. Bloody revolutions and wars of the early 20th century lay still in the future, but the conflict is brewing and the cracks of the dysfunctional empire are beginning to show. Ancient ways of life, unchanged for generations, have to give in to confusing developments in politics, industry, science and crime.
The release date of the series has yet to be confirmed.
