The third season of the series “Method” premieres
Photo: frame from the film.
It happens: one of the most secret projects in the country has been seized and declassified. When the first season of “Method” was filmed in Nizhny Novgorod, it was impossible to get close to the set to fire a cannon. Both director Yuri Bykov and the actors were bound hand and foot by a slavish confidentiality contract with (now fugitive) producer Alexander Tsekalo and kept quiet like fish on ice. Only the fashion magazine “Dog” was able to photograph the main actor of the project in person. And that’s without spoilers.
When the second season of the psychological thriller about a hypersensitive investigator with a perverted system of priorities Rodion Meglin (Konstantin Khabensky) began filming, the situation did not change significantly. “KP” literally bit by bit, through the staff of the film crew, extracted information about the project.
But the shooting of the third season, organized by Kinopoisk (thanks for your common sense!), began with the publication of pictures from the set. Which is good news. We have already written about “Method-3”. And director Yuri Bykov, who returned to the thriller after missing the second season and a conflict with Tsekalo at the editing table, also gave food for thought.
Photo: frame from the film.
We can say that the creators of the project significantly revised their concept after the disastrous second season, where Paulina Andreeva, who plays Yesenia, Meglin’s assistant, tried to pull the rug out from under her feet. The experiment did not turn out well at all: the actress, who tried to put on a serious face in close-ups, could not play the first violin, so the series was urgently re-edited. Frankenstein, which was released, did not impress anyone. The fiasco turned out to be so obvious that Andreeva took up writing scripts (“Psycho”, “Actresses”) and her character will probably not appear in the third season.
Photo: frame from the film.
But Meglin will have a new beautiful intern (where would we be without her?), and director Yuri Bykov also talked about it. Anna Savranskaya, who briefly appeared in the film “Ice 3”, appears in the third part of “Method” in a completely unromantic role. The actress, who graduated from VGIK, looks extremely convincing in the image of the desperate sociopath Lera, a mathematics student who helps Meglin to hunt down thugs. In a way, the girl reminds the detective himself: she also cannot always contain her inner demons and is also prone to extraordinary moves. By the way, Rodion is no longer a lone wolf: he heads a whole department of equally unique, corrosive and sensitive specialists like himself.
The plot of the script is now based on a new formula: not one episode, one maniac, but something deeper and more interesting. The project will have much less blood, which Tsekalo loved so much, and much more inner psychologism, which Bykov is excellent at radiating (“Major”, “Live”, “Watchman”).
“Our current concept is extremely different from the first and second seasons, it offers a completely new perspective, fills the story with new characters and allows you to watch it almost like a documentary,” Bykov stressed. “Now we have the opportunity to make a very bright, eventful and realistic drama about our time from “Method”. In the first season there was a comic, there was a scary fairy-tale spirit, but nine years later it will seem irrelevant from an aesthetic point of view. The new concept has the opportunity to combine a modern realistic view of the maniac and his life. There is such an aesthetic in my original films.
Photo: frame from the film.
For the first time, Meglin’s personal file also appears in the frame – a medical record, from which we learn the detective’s age: the date of birth – January 25, 1970 – coincides with the date of birth of director and showrunner Taylor Sheridan, who produced “The Killer”, “At Any Cost” and the TV series “Yellowstone”, which Yuri Bykov loves. From the map we learn that the investigator lives in St. Petersburg – he is registered on Krestovsky Island and lives on Sadovaya, in the center. This means that the viewer will either learn the history of Meglin’s illness (recovery?) or be left even more confused. For example, Rodion himself can get a medical card and destroy it, “resetting” himself and his biography.
Photo: frame from the film.
There are still plenty of cacti in all the frames. And this is already an integral part of the “Method” universe: both the visualization of the detective’s prickly character and the memorable stars on the fuselage – a cactus, a villain killed by Meglin.
Photo: frame from the film.
“This flower is not the prettiest,” Oleg Malovichko, the project’s scriptwriter, explained to KP. “But even behind its thorns lies beauty.” The ultimate villain contains a minimum of warmth that should make the viewer feel sorry for him. And recognize in themselves what the maniacs did not discover in themselves at that moment.
Photo: frame from the film.
The filming of the third season of “Method” is taking place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vyborg and Yaroslavl. The premiere will take place in 2025 at Kinopoisk.
