Based on Julia May Jonas’ critically acclaimed novel, Vladimir follows an unnamed, middle-aged academic (Rachel Weisz) as she explores her desires in a world that is unaccepting of lustful older women.
Vladimir sets its tone early, showing a man tied to a chair in its opening moments, before flashing back to six weeks earlier. Here we meet the fourth wall-busting narrator who talks directly to the camera Fleabag-style, a popular 50-something English professor who is going through a midlife crisis of sorts.
She hasn’t had adequate time to have her needs met because her life has become encompassed by her husband, John’s (John Slattery), sex scandal. John has been accused of sexual misconduct by six of his students, although as the narrator points out, is it really misconduct if it’s consensual between two adults?
The couple had always had an agreement about the boundaries of their marriage, with both parties engaging in extramarital affairs, but it feels different now that their marriage has been dragged into the spotlight. Their marriage meets an even bigger bump in the road when handsome, married novelist Vladimir (Leo Woodall) joins the faculty. The narrator instantly becomes infatuated with the younger man, her mind often wandering to picture them in graphically sexual acts.
Known as Vlad, the object of the narrator’s wandering thoughts is a sexy, in-demand, young writer who is new to the uptight world of academia. He has his own problems, with a young child and a wife (Jessica Henwick) battling post-partum complications and a lack of time to spend on his next novel. Vlad is less a real person and more an idealized fantasy, so his family life is often underexplored.
The narrator plays a dangerous game with Vlad, trying to become close to him and his wife. She reads his book, joins a faculty panel just to spend time with him, and even offers the use of their pool to their family. Her obsession with the young man threatens her marriage, her work, and her relationship with her own, feisty, androgynous daughter.
While her husband’s affairs linger over the plot, the miniseries is more interested in following her obsession with Vlad. Rather than being about a woman whose husband is being investigated for misconduct, Vladimir is more about how his behaviour clouds her judgement and impacts her own extramarital conduct. At times, the constant fantasy cut-away scenes of herself with Vlad become repetitive, especially when they interrupt a compelling real-life interaction between the duo.
Vladimir loves pointing out the generational differences between older faculty members and Gen Z students. In one of the best moments over the eight episodes, the narrator addresses desire in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and realises that the two generations aren’t so different – they just use different language to describe the same concepts.
Vladimir subverts sex and relationships from all sides. The narrator is supposed to play the poor wife who stands by her husband in his sex scandal, not an empowered woman in an open relationship. And this narrator is truly empowered; she is entirely compelled by her own desire, not those imposed on her by society. The female gaze can be as complicated and problematic as the male. Vladimir finds new ways to explore female agency, sex positivity, and fetishisation of art, never becoming too dry or too preachy.
Many comedy dramas label themselves as darkly comic, but Vladimir is genuinely hilarious. Weisz’s narrator comically breaks the fourth wall to share her grievances about her husband and the hypocrisy of her colleagues. The show is full of deliciously dark observations about morality, generational differences, and the perils of cancel culture. It’s the type of thing many of us have thought, but very few of us have actually had the guts to say out loud.
All these observations are delivered with a sultry wink by Rachel Weisz, who is fully empowered in this role and having the best time being so. Rachel Weisz is entrancing in this role, seductive and wry. The whole show is about her and seen through her eyes, and very few actresses can maintain your gaze like Rachel. Leo Woodall isn’t given too much to work with, as talented as he is as an actor. He essentially reuses his likable heartthrob character from Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, but he’s very good at it. John Slattery is the perfect person to cast here, totally believable as a man who toes the line of charming and slimy.
Newcomer Eileen Robertson shines as their queer, lawyer daughter who spends much of the series butting heads with her mother. As liberal as the narrator is about her life, she still can’t help but impart traditional values onto her daughter and her relationship with her girlfriend. The faculty is full of a cast of witty and dislikable characters who anyone who has been to a liberal arts college will recognise, played by fantastic comedy actors like Veep’s Matt Walsh.
Vladimir, as funny as it is, isn’t afraid to confront huge moral questions. Is the narrator complicit in her husband’s affairs and, by proximity, his downfall? Even if she agrees with him, should she still be behind him and compromise her own career? Should society appreciate that sometimes affairs are just consenting affairs, and that the power of gap is, occasionally, sexy? In an era of free love and open marriages, this series breaks down difficult topics that don’t have black or white answers.
The opening six episodes are funny, sexy, and thrilling, unlike anything else currently on television. It leisurely introduces the characters, their relationship, and their moral compass. The world-building forces the audience to fully buy into their conundrum and really care what happens. Yet the wheels fall off in the closing two episodes, which frantically try to move the plot forward after pushing it to the background for so long. All the episodes build up to one extended scene between the narrator and Vladimir, but when it gets there, it hardly seems worth it. It’s like the writers suddenly remembered they had to handle the story and only had 60 minutes to conclude it. It’s a disappointingly franctic ending to a thrilling and fresh take on female agency.
As sexually liberated as the couple are, the world around them is not. The once respected academic couple have lost their footing, now no longer held in such a high regard. The narrator’s insight into what she thinks about the accusers is certainly thought-provoking and uncomfortably honest. These scenarios are so often depicted from the point of view of the accuser or the accused, but rarely by someone impacted but not directly involved. It’s a pity the show wants to be more of a stream of fantasies than a coherent narrative, because the plot about her husband and his misconduct case has a goldmine of wasted potential.
Rating: B-
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Vladimir
When an English professor becomes obsessed with a handsome new colleague, her already complicated marriage and career are thrown into total chaos.
