Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Gentleman In Moscow’ On Showtime/Paramount+, Where A Count Spends Years In House Arrest In A Swanky Soviet Hotel

It’s hard to believe, but Ewan McGregor’s breakout role in Trainspotting was 28 years ago. In that time he’s played everyone from a Scottish heroin addict to Obi-Wan Kenobi. He seems to fit well in different genres, and can handle material that’s light as well as dark. In a new series on Showtime and Paramount+, McGregor has to handle ups and downs in the same scene, and does so with ease.

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A snowy Red Square. A graphic explains that in the four years since the 1917 Russian revolution, Leninists have been rearranging the old Tsarist aristocracy and giving its assets back to the people. “Out with the old, in with the new.”

The Gist: One of those members of the Tsarist aristocracy is Count Alexander Rostov (Ewan McGregor), who returned to Moscow the year after the revolution after being in Paris for years. He’s been in a suite at the Metropol Hotel during those years (it is now 1921), since his house burned down. He’s seated before a Bolshevik tribunal that is inclined to execute him for being an aristocrat. But a poem he wrote in 1913 was considered by many in the party a call to revolution. So he’s sentenced to a life sentence, to be served in house arrest at the Metropol. If he ever steps outside the hotel, he’ll be shot immediately.

He’s brought to the hotel by two soldiers and Osip Glebnikov (Johnny Harris), who vows to be the one to shoot him if he ever leaves. Rostov thinks he’s going to be able to stay in his suite, but he’s instead placed in a spare and dingy servant’s room, only allowed to bring a few possessions up with him. He chooses a desk and a painting of the woman he returned to Moscow for.

Rostov tries to make the most of it; he still dresses for dinner in the restaurant and reads the paper in the lobby. He goes to the barber shop to make sure his hair and prodigious moustache are neatly trimmed. The staff still calls him “your excellency.” Yet, he still longs to go outside those doors, and the monotony of his sentence still gets to him as the days pass.

He meets a young girl named Nina Kulikova (Alexa Goodall), who is curious about Rostov’s aristocratic life, and is always around because her father, who lives in the hotel, is always working. He also runs into an old friend named Nikolai Petrov (Paul Ready), a former prince who has been stripped of his title and is now playing violin in string quartet at the hotel. Petrov is looking for a way to get out of Moscow, and knows someone who can get the two of them forged documents. He encourages Rostov to go with him, but Rostov is reluctant, for many reasons.

When Nina takes Rostov on an excursion through some of the hidden parts of the hotel, he sees Petrov’s picture on a roster of upcoming arrests and executions, which prompts him to tell his friend to leave the city immediately.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Ben Vanstone based on Amor Towles’s novel, A Gentleman In Moscow reminds us of a Russian Revolution version of the film The Terminal.

Our Take: The idea of A Gentleman In Moscow is that somehow, despite his restrictive circumstances, Rostov is going to create a life for himself inside the walls of the Metropol, making connections he never would have made if he were still the aristocrat that was sentenced to house arrest. It’s an enticing idea to examine in a limited series, made even better by the charming performance of McGregor as Rostov.

People are going to come in and out of Rostov’s life, including an actress named Anna Urbanova (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and an old friend named Mishka (Fehinti Balogun), who is loyal to the party. All the while. Rostov is going to be inside the hotel, taking Osip’s threats to kill him seriously. Even his relationship with Osip will evolve as the years pass.

It’s a really fascinating idea, seeing Rostov build this world without ever leaving the building. It certainly helps that McGregor plays Rostov as a guy who, while certainly not happy with his circumstance, tries his best to live within them. There’s something keeping him loyal to Mother Russia, despite the fact that he’s constantly under the threat of death, and he’s not completely unsympathetic to the Bolshevik cause. Those reasons also inform his relatively positive worldview, even though he’s trapped in this luxurious prison.

McGregor has been around long enough for us to not be surprised by such a performance; for three decades, he’s shown himself to be able to handle light material as well as dark. But with Rostov, he has to handle both at once, often in the same scene. His wistfulness over not being able to leave can happen right before a funny interaction with Nina, or his regret over a role in a duel can affect him right after he has an interesting experience at the barber shop. He makes an oligarch into a sympathetic figure, one who grows and changes with his imprisonment, and that’s awfully tough to pull off.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: A narrator, representing a grown-up Nina, says she would not be alive to tell Rostov’s tale if he had followed Petrov out the door that night. Young Nina looks on as Osip gives Rostov the bow that belonged to his friend, and the reality of Rostov’s situation really hits him.

Sleeper Star: We really enjoyed Alexa Goodall as young Nina, but she needs to share this award with McGregor’s mustache, which is 100% real.

Most Pilot-y Line: Rostov gets into an appointment dispute at the barber shop, which is how the handlebars on his mustache get cut off. It’s a silly scene, but McGregor plays his reactions to his missing ends for some subtle laughs.

Our Call: STREAM IT. McGregor’s performance is key to the success of A Gentleman In Moscow, a series which has its dark moments, but is a whole lot more hopeful than it seems on the surface.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.