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In 2014, as anti-government protesters clashed in the streets with state forces, a popular comedian appearing on a TV news show put on a serious face and delivered a solemn message to the country’s widely detested, Kremlin-placating president Viktor Yanukovych. “You’re no longer the president of Ukraine,” he announced before moving on to address Vladimir Putin. “Do not allow even a hint of a military conflict [to break out],” he warned, staring straight down the lens. It was in this moment, five years before announcing his candidacy for office, that Volodymyr Zelenskyy began his transformation from leading actor to national leader.
A new three-part BBC documentary, The Zelensky Story (the BBC uses a different transliteration), looks at how a man who made a name for himself sending up politicians became synonymous with the fight to protect democracy against authoritarian aggression. An extraordinary tale, it is also one that has been told several times since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. But familiarity is offset by a certain intimacy in this latest retelling, which has first-hand access to both Zelenskyy and his wife, Olena, as well as old friends and political peers (including Boris Johnson) and a trove of unseen and behind-the-scenes footage.
Interviewed by director Michael Waldman, Zelenskyy is genial and unhurried as he reflects on his formative years, his “rock ’n’ roll” phase, his two improbable career breakthroughs. Though it remains surreal to see the future Ukrainian president on Dancing with the Stars juxtaposed with recaps of what Putin was doing, these scenes from his earlier career highlight the telegenic appeal that has driven his political rise. A section on his sitcom Servant of the People (in which he played an inexperienced, idealistic president) is illuminating given how Zelenskyy employed the same writers to help shape his real-life campaign and agenda.
For all the stirring examples of Zelenskyy’s heroism and the tributes to his wartime courage, the documentary avoids becoming a hagiography. It doesn’t shy away from the populist tactics deployed during his candidacy, or the accusations of the naivety of his first years in office, but it does seem wary of pushing him.
Questions about how the conflict might proceed and end, and what the country’s future might look like, largely go unasked. Comments by Zelenskyy about the west failing to recognise Putin’s irredentist intentions pack some punch, but lack detail. That said, a scene placing us in the room as he speaks with French President Emmanuel Macron the day after the invasion is a fascinating showcase of pragmatic yet impassioned diplomacy in action.
Other revealing moments come in the conversations with a subdued Olena Zelenska, who hints at the personal toll and conflicting emotions that her husband’s choices have had on his family. After he announced his presidential ambitions to the country before consulting her, she admits harbouring “a faint hope that he wouldn’t win”.
Zelenskyy himself intimates that a life beyond politics awaits him in hopefully peaceful times. Before any political aspirations his biggest dream, we hear, was to win an Oscar. Stranger things have happened.
★★★☆☆
On BBC2 on September 4 at 9pm. New episodes released weekly and available to stream on iPlayer