Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Professor M has a lot on her plate, like an upcoming case against her husband over accusations of sexual harassment, but she is completely and wholly distracted by Vladimir, the hot new professor on campus. This show is all about lust, desire, and pining. Hell, lots of pining.
Based on a novel by Julia May Jonas of the same name, the eight part limited Netflix series stars Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, Dead Ringers) as narrator M, a popular literature professor, while Leo Woodall (One Day, Citadel) plays the titular character, the new guy, and the object of M’s obsession.
M isn’t too fazed by the case against husband John (played by John Slattery) – they’re in an open marriage and she is confident all his student affairs were consensual. So she instead focuses on sexy fantasies about Vladimir, who is married to a beautiful adjunct lecturer Cynthia (Jessica Henwick) and doesn’t seem too interested in starting a steamy fling with the older professor. Or is he?
When Vladimir grins and says things like, “I have a thing for crazy girls,” M begins to think her fantasies might not be so far-fetched after all. In a slightly amusing twist, she attempts to befriend Cynthia, hoping that cozying up to the wife will somehow dampen her enthusiasm to get into Vladimir’s pants. But Cynthia has neither the time nor the interest in the professor’s awkward attempts at bonding, she has a toddler and a mental health crisis to take care of. If anything, the rejection only spurs M to chase her crush.
Eight episodes long, the show kicks off with a cold open set in a cabin. Vladimir wakes up tied in ropes and screams, “What the fuck?!”, while M sleeps not too far away. Did she kidnap the younger man, or was it some kind of bondage game gone wrong? You can imagine several scenarios about how things might have landed here. The show then quickly rewinds to reveal how it all began… with a harmless crush, of course.
Rachel Weisz is incredibly entertaining as M, whose dominant mood through the series is ‘horny’, with her lust for the younger professor bordering on obsession. Which means M often behaves like a silly teenager in heat, instead of the successful, intelligent, smart professor she is supposed to be. But just sometimes, when she isn’t drooling over the man, she tries to help husband John with his case, which includes a range of tactics, including trying to manipulate those who accuse him of sexual misconduct.
Surprisingly (and sadly), Weisz’ onscreen chemistry with neither John Slattery nor Leo Woodall is exciting enough for a show centered on desire. Between M and John, years of marriage could’ve cooled down their attraction for each other, but with M and Vladimir, the tension looks completely one-sided. Vladimir is smiley, flirty with pretty much everybody he talks too, so there isn’t any special spark between him and M.
A major subplot follows M’s lawyer daughter Sid (Ellen Robertson) stepping in to handle her father’s case, much to M’s horror. The family apparently earns enough to maintain a swanky house with a pool and a rentable cabin getaway, yet hiring a lawyer remains mysteriously unaffordable. M and Sid share a hilariously prickly relationship, which injects some awkwardly funny tension into the show. If there’s one takeaway here, it’s this: don’t volunteer to fight your father’s sexual-harassment case.
The show is at its funniest when it takes sly jabs at its ‘woke’ Gen Z students and their tendency to take offense or spiral into anxiety over the smallest things. One student objects to the tone M uses while reading aloud in class. In another darkly comic moment, a few students report they feel anxious speaking to M, which is ironic, considering they approach her to discuss her ordeal of being the wife of a man accused of sexual harassment. If anyone has reason to feel uncomfortable in that conversation, it’s clearly M.
Overall, Vladimir feels like an underwhelming slow tease about an older professor’s crush on her younger colleague, yet it rarely delivers enough tension, steam, or even laughs to justify the build-up. The climax circles back to the cold open, finally revealing why Vladimir was tied up in that cabin.
The final episode plays out like a half-hearted thriller, open-ended, slightly silly, and determined to leave viewers with more questions than answers. “You don’t believe me?” M, our narrator, asks the audience with the faintest smirk.
Still, the Netflix series remains watchable largely because of Rachel Weisz’s terrific performance, even if M herself is an inconsistent character who occasionally does dumb things.
Rating: 6 on 10. Watch ‘Vladimir’ on Netflix.
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Disagree. The show is about women’s voices as women and as artists. It accomplishes this in a clever way. If you don’t understand the meaning of the art you can’t recognize the importance of the details.