I watched Zelensky’s show ‘Servant of the People’. It’s hilarious and poignant

Zelensky’s portrayal of fictional President Vasyl Petrovych Goloborodko is a reminder that it takes intelligence to be funny, and it takes bravery to be self-deprecating

Volodymyr Zelensky in the TV series ‘Servant of the People’ (Kvartal 95/Netflix)

In the first episode of the Ukrainian comedy series Servant of the People, Volodymyr Zelensky’s character, Vasyl Petrovych Goloborodko, launches into a tirade about the importance of history. His character teaches it in high school, and in this scene, has just been told his students must leave his class to go tend to other duties (namely, assembling voting booths for the election about to take place). Why is it always his students who get interrupted, he asks? Why not the other students from class 10A? Because, he’s told, class 10A is busy studying math. “So what about math? I have history,” he shoots back. At this, Vasyl is promptly informed that comparing history to math is like “comparing a d**k with a finger”.

As Vasyl starts packing up his belongings, he lets out his anger. “I’m sick and tired of all of this!” he says. “Mathematics is valued as a science. That’s all very fine. But history, as you said, is dog-s**t? Then we wonder why our politicians make the same mistakes when they enter the halls of power? Because they’re great mathematicians! All they know is to divide and subtract. That’s all!”

He then goes on a magnificently outraged rant about how he’s tired of always having to vote for the same “s**tsticks” and how the world would be better off if a teacher like him got to live like the president while the president had to live like a teacher. “I tell you this as a teacher of history,” he adds, slightly out of breath.

The harangue is one of many eerie scenes in Servant of the People, the show in which Zelensky first fictitiously assumed the office he went on to be elected to in real life. It’s also an important plot point: unbeknownst to his character, a student films the diatribe, which in turn goes viral and unexpectedly propels Vasyl to the presidency. Servant of the People first aired between 2015 and 2019 in Ukraine; according to Deadline, it was available on Netflix in the US from 2017 to 2021. The streaming platform announced on Wednesday that the series, or at least its first season, had returned to its catalog after popular demand.

Servant of the People has become a subject of international curiosity as Zelensky leads his country through Russia’s invasion, establishing himself as a resilient, involved wartime leader. The show is simultaneously captivating and heartbreaking to watch; its opening credits feature sweeping, sunny views of Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the capital city’s central square, where barricades and anti-tank obstacle defenses have now been erected to prevent Russian forces from entering. On Wednesday, Zelensky showed Congress a video demonstrating the toll of war on Ukraine. It began with attractive shots of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Mariupol and Zaporizhzhia, interspersed with footage of adults and children smiling, laughing, and playing. The video quickly transitioned to footage of recent bombings, along with clips of people sobbing, trying to get their loved ones to safety, and burying lifeless bodies. It was a harrowing portrayal of the merciless toll the war has taken on Ukraine and its people, the most brutal before and after imaginable.

Servant of the People is a longer version of the video’s “before” part – it’s upbeat, witty and well-timed. Indeed, it’s often laugh-out-loud funny. One of its main themes is political corruption, but it explores it through a satirical lens, through Zelensky’s portrayal of Vasyl, who is at times blundering, at times righteous. The show feels like a product of what Ukraine should be allowed to remain: a free country telling its own story, producing its own cultural output.

It’s somewhat surreal to watch Zelensky, who has been giving updates from the streets of Kyiv and talking to other world leaders over the past three weeks, play a man who is unexpectedly thrown into the very same role he’s now inhabiting. Much has been made of the Ukrainian president’s past as a comedian: videos of his former skits have gone viral, as have clips of his time on Ukraine’s edition of Dancing With the Stars. Servant of the People gives more insight into his work as a performer. As president, his character Vasyl is the ultimate fish out of water. He doesn’t know how to be a head of state, how to field journalists’ questions, or how to give a speech. (In the show’s storytelling, Vasyl tends to find success once he stops trying to conform to his advisers’ expectations and starts listening to himself and/or his former students.) Zelensky’s portrayal of Vasyl is a reminder that it takes intelligence to be funny, and it takes bravery to be self-deprecating.

Zelensky has used his media fluency in his political life. Servant of the People became the name of the party he now leads, and the show itself can be credited with paving his path to office. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, writer Emily St James noted in Vox: “His strength in creating and presenting his own message, as well as his ability to straddle the line in appealing to Ukrainians and lots of other people (including Russians), has been evident throughout the war.”

Perhaps Zelensky’s trajectory is even more fascinating because America also recently made a president out of a TV star, but to disastrous effects. “Being good at being on TV does not automatically equal being a good leader,” St James adds. “Donald Trump, after all, was very, very good at being on TV, with an innate understanding of how to use the medium to his advantage, but that had next to no connection to whatever skills he had as a president.” Zelensky, in contrast, has so far leveraged these skills with courage and integrity.

There is power in humor, and deep discernment in comedy. Few shows exemplify this as well as Servant of the People, and the performance of a fictional president turned real leader.