1.8 million.
This is the number of views recorded on Monday March 7 by the series whose main character is the current Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Broadcast in Ukraine from 2015, "Servant of the people", whose 23 episodes that make up the first season have been available on the Arte.tv site since last November, has aroused increased interest since the start of the Russian invasion.
The figures testify to it, it was able to attract more than 400,000 new spectators in less than 5 days.
Zelensky, then simply an actor, plays Vassili Petrovitch Goloborodko, a 37-year-old divorced history teacher living in Kiev, with his parents, and who suddenly finds himself propelled to the head of the country.
There, he engages in the fight against corruption and the economic omnipotence of the oligarchs.
Themes taken up when he went from fiction to reality, becoming head of state in 2019, with more than 73% of the vote.
A real documentary of the Ukrainian leader on TMC
And if the success of the series in France can be explained by current events, it is also due to the desire to better understand the personality of the person who must lead his country through the conflict: "I was unaware of the existence of the series , but while looking for documentaries to understand what was happening in Ukraine, I came across it,
explains Natalie, 60.
And I said to myself that it could be interesting to know who this president was, who came from a background that has a priori nothing to do with politics.
Arte has still not indicated whether it plans to broadcast the other two seasons of the series.
Note that TMC will broadcast this Wednesday, March 9 at 9:15 p.m. a 52-minute documentary, entitled “La story Zelensky”.
Carried by the voices of Willy Papa and Nicolas Fresco, two columnists of "Quotidien", this portrait composed of archives will aim to understand the path of the Ukrainian leader, from his beginnings as a comedian to his election to the presidency. from his country.