Tsar of the Night

Early-20th-century St Petersburg is a city of imperial splendour and poverty. Nicholas II’s grip is weakening, and society splits into those who want freedom, those who cling to the old order and those who are simply trying to survive.

After their father’s death, siblings Yakov and Sofya are left on their own. Sofya falls in with a circle that talks of revolutionary ideas and secret plans. Yakov tries to stay out of politics but is drawn into street gangs and dangerous connections. Without knowing it, both become pawns in a plot to bring down the empire.

Across eight episodes, it is a story of choosing between duty, conviction and fear — and of whether the two can find each other again and stay true to themselves on the eve of catastrophe.

Yakov is one of the series’ two central characters. He has an unusual gift for healing and easing other people’s pain. But in the very first episode the gift fails him: his sister is badly wounded and taken away before his eyes.

Alone, Yakov falls in with a gang of market thieves. On his first job at the bazaar he unexpectedly runs into Sofya, whom he believed dead — and from then on their stories are tied together again.