It’s tough to slot Russian Doll into any specific genre. Written by Leslye Headland, Amy Poehler and Orange Is The New Black breakout star Natasha Lyonne, it features Lyonne as Nadia, a woman who keeps coming back to life at her 36th birthday party after repeatedly dying during the course of the night.
Initially, Nadia wonders if she is hallucinating, and if it is some potent drug making her imagine multiple deaths. Soon, though, she realises she is stuck in a loop and those around her seem to have no recollection of previous interactions. Every time Nadia comes close to solving the mystery behind her deaths, time resets — and she is back in the washroom at her party. Harry Nilsson’s Gotta Get Up plays in the background every time — it becomes impossible to not imagine the song playing at the exact moment of reboot after a point.
Lyonne plays Nadia with trademark quirkiness; using her sardonic dialogue delivery and expressive physicality to maximum effect. Her presence adds to the overall light-heartedness. Nadia is dealing with some complicated issues at the time of her deaths, like reconnecting with a married man she was having an affair with, and coming to terms with her mother’s death at the same age as she is currently. While the overall treatment remains light, using death as a plot device makes it difficult to keep the darkness away after a while.
There is, for example, a montage of Nadia repeatedly falling down the stairs and meeting her end, until she realises she would be safer taking the precarious route of a fire escape. It is a funny gag at the outset, but its psychological impact on the protagonist is hard to miss. Unlike a show like The Good Place — a comedy about the afterlife — which maintains a consistent tone of humour, Russian Doll constantly switches gears between morbidly funny and deeply insightful.
The nature of Nadia’s deaths become more gruesome with time. In one instance, her adoptive mother shoots her, mistaking her to be a burglar. Nadia watches the abject fear and guilt her mother experiences in the final moments of that specific loop. Every time she reboots, you sense the emotional and mental trauma each death has taken on her. This is Groundhog Day with an incredibly intense twist.
The show smartly incorporates newer themes as it goes along, like the presence of parallel universes. Nadia realises that she could, in fact, be reliving her last day in multiple universes, leaving behind grieving friends and family in each universe. Then there is the strand about how life is not just about finding your happily-ever-after, but also about coming to terms with loss and sadness.
What makes Russian Doll truly marvellous is that the show finds a way to incorporate these heavyweight themes without bringing more attention to them than required. What you are truly invested in — till the very end — is to see Nadia break out of this tumultuous cycle, while absorbing little nuggets of humour, emotion and insight along the way. It is modern television at its very best.
Season 1 of Russian Doll is now streaming on Netflix
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