How Did A Jewish Comedian Become President Of Ukraine? Netflix Has Season One of "Servant Of The People"

Volodymyr Zelensky burst into many people's consciousness last week.  Some knew that he'd been a Ukrainian comedian with a hit TV show already.  In the show he plays a history teacher who's caught on video by one of his students while he's ranting against the corruption of his government.  The video goes viral.  His students use crowdsourcing to get enough money to register him as a candidate.  And he wins.

And then the comedian actually runs for President.

I just discovered that Season one of the television show - Servant of the People - is on Netflix.  The episodes are short (about 25 minutes) and we got through about five last night.

The show doesn't tell you much about the actor himself, but it does give you a sense of what caused Ukrainians to elect a man with no previous political experience.  And you get a sense of the overwhelming corruption in the Ukraine government.  And it's fun.

So if you have Netflix, this is definitely worth your time to give you a better sense of the Ukraine and Kiev and the man Trump tried to force into finding dirt on Biden's son by withholding several hundred million dollars in aid.

Of course, you may want to know more.

This April 4 Slate article looks into the crystal ball to predict what sort of president he might be.

An April 27 Al Jazeera report.

Here's an alternative bio with some quirky English from Height Of.


In the episodes we've seen on Netflix, the school teacher/president is having some problems dealing with the layers of corruption and wealth of the many, many friends and relatives of government officials whorls  hold positions in the government.  It's not clear how the now real president of Ukraine is handling these problems.  At least he's been introduced to the dilemmas he's facing through his role in the show.

But there may be more to this.  He's an owner of the production company and a writer of the show.    Was the show a setup to get him elected?  It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

[I'm not linking to the Netflix show because while I know how to get there from my Netflix account, I'm not sure how to send others there.  In any case, when you're into Netflix, just put Servant of the People into the Netflix search.]