Russian crime goes mass market
August 7, 1997
Web posted at: 4:33 a.m. EDT (0833 GMT)From Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty
MOSCOW (CNN) -- Murders, fires, death on the highway; they're all over Russian TV screens and the people can't seem to get enough.
"Of course it's scary," says one Muscovite. "But whenever I have a chance, I watch it. I can't explain why. It's horrifying and interesting at the same time."
There are now at least six crime shows on the air. "Road Patrol" gets the highest rating. The 15-minute program is shown three times a day.
But this isn't the Hollywood version of make-believe. This is reality.
Its camera crews, dressed in black and driving a French Renault, patrol the streets looking for murder and mayhem. When they find it, they shoot every gory detail.
The pictures are so explicit they probably wouldn't be shown on U.S. television.
"What can you do about it, that's life today," says "Road Patrol" correspondent Vladimir Rasskazov. "I think we should show it the way it is without decoration. It might also be a good warning for somebody."
The Moscow police even have their own popular crime show: "Petrovka 38," the real-life address of the Interior Ministry. There's less blood and guts than "Road Patrol," and more crime-prevention reenactments.
'Scary? Not really'
The genre's popularity is an amazing change from just a few years ago when crime reporting was censored in Russia. Even airplane crashes were state secrets then. But in the past five years, the crime rate in Russia has nearly doubled, followed closely by the increasing fear of crime.
"When I watch a show like this I get scared for my children. I just switch channels immediately," says one person. "Our life is full of stressful things by itself, so why should I be adding more stress?"
But as one sociologist (who is also a television programming director) sees it, Russians use crime shows as a painkiller.
"Watching and feeling horrors on the TV screen makes survival in real life easier. People accept the horrors surrounding them in their everyday life," says Russian TV Programming Director Vsevolod Vilchek.
Others say showing bloody corpses takes its toll.
"We know there are cases where people have committed crimes from watching too much violence on TV," says Viktor Biryukov of Petrovka 38 TV.
But tell that to the fans of Russian crime shows.
"It's fun to watch," one man says. "Scary? Not really. It's all about other people, not me."
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