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I find myself grappling with the challenge of reviewing Vladimir; instead of critiquing it, I feel an urge to simply transcribe its brilliance. Julia May Jonas, who adapted her own novel for the screen, weaves together witty remarks, sharp insights into human behavior, and subtly provocative exchanges with such skill that a traditional review seems insufficient. While “thrill ride” is often reserved for action films, Vladimir undeniably earns this description with its string of delightfully unexpected lines.
In this episode, Rachel Weisz’s character, a professor whose name remains undisclosed, steps in to support her husband, John. He faces suspension due to allegations of having inappropriate relationships with his students. If an anticipated hearing goes against him, he risks losing his pension, which he is close to securing. The couple’s strategy is to delay matters until summer when John can retire with his benefits intact. However, John needs his wife’s assistance, and intriguingly, he reveals that a woman named Lila has joined the accusations, prompting the professor to reluctantly get involved.
Once she commits, she goes all in. She even resorts to threatening her colleague, David, to ensure he arranges a meeting with the university’s top brass. The threat involves revealing their affair to David’s unsuspecting wife unless he complies. Despite finding the situation “disappointing,” David is left with no choice but to acquiesce. One might wonder what attracted our narrator to David in the first place. She candidly shares, “He has an enormous cock.” There are certainly less compelling reasons for an affair!
David facilitates a meeting between the professor and Lynn (played by Kari Matchett), the wife of the college president. Throughout their conversation, Lynn behaves inappropriately, excessively complimenting the professor’s appearance and reminiscing about her own college affair with a professor, which involved an uncircumcised partner. Yet, the professor’s charm prevails, convincing Lynn to postpone John’s hearing until the summer, effectively buying him more time.
True to form, John quickly jeopardizes the plan. While out at a bar with a much younger woman, despite claiming he ceased student affairs years ago, he encounters Lynn and her husband, Steve, the college president (portrayed by Chris Handfield). Foolishly, John doesn’t attempt a hasty exit and ends up caught in the act. His wife, who had vouched for his reformed behavior and believed she could manage him, now faces the reality of his unchanged ways.
Meanwhile, the professor’s reputation on campus continues to deteriorate. Her colleagues keep gossiping about her, bemoaning her lack of self-respect. Students are abandoning her once standing-room-only course on American women writers, including Edwina (Mallori Johnson), a student she advises and clearly thinks the world of. Her own daughter Sid has gone a step further and is barely speaking with her. And oh, that barista or whatever who allegedly hates her because she failed her? That would be the aforementioned Lila, with whom it seems the good professor had a complicated relationship herself. Easy there, Lydia Tàr!
Small wonder that the professor takes to Vladimir like a drowning woman to oxygen. He’s new, he’s sexy, his book (which is half the size of hers) turns out to be incredible, and he’s very obviously interested in her. It’s got to be nice to get some positive feedback of any kind, let alone the kind Vladimir’s giving her. At one point, he encourages her to kickstart her stalled writing career by thinking of writing as something “secret and dirty,” just for her. I mean, come on.
All the while, his body language around her is so obviously seductive in nature it’s like a physical sext. There’s a great recurring sight gag of him peacocking by placing his arms behind his head when he talks. No one’s done that for the professor in years!
And the narrator objectifies Vladimir like he’s a slab of beef. She stares at his dick through his pants when he spills a drop of his martini on them. In one powerfully erotic moment that we don’t know is a fantasy until it’s over, the professor leans in close and smells his sweaty armpit. It may be just a daydream, but Vladimir makes it clear to her he’s open to making some dreams come true.
Are there red flags? Sure, you could say that. His delayed interest in reading her book, for example, compared to his enthusiasm for her husband’s. (Everyone on this show has written exactly one book, which is funny to me, a person who has written exactly one book.) The weird vibes with his wife Cynthia, who encouraged him to drink with the professor last episode but is angered to find him drunk with her in this one.
There are repeated references to Cynthia having some kind of terrible, nearly fatal mental health or substance abuse crisis when their daughter was two; Cynthia is none to happy to learn Vladimir already divulged this to the narrator. Of course, his own relationship and parenting problems seem likely to push him into the professor’s arms as much as the reverse.
As it stands, the professor departs their intense conversation at a faculty drink-up, races home, ends fifteen years of writer’s block by scrawling out her smutty fantasy about fucking him in the bar’s bathroom, then masturbates with gusto…while ignoring six calls from Sid, with whom she’d desperately been trying to reconnect. Horniness has a uniquely powerful ability to recalibrate your priorities.
Oh right, then someone breaks into her backyard and tackles her into her pool while she’s out there having a post-masturbation smoke. Your guess as to what that’s all about is as good as mine!
Despite not yet being particularly explicit — nothing here approaches Industry levels of filth at the moment — Vladimir is a powerfully sexy show. The blushingly frank dialogue is often spoken right at us, as if the narrator is a friend who’s kissing and telling over a couple of drinks. Her twitterpated chemistry with Vladimir radiates heat, as does the way she gazes at and fantasizes about his body. And it’s hard to complain about spending half an hour looking at Rachel Weisz, Leo Woodall, Jessica Henwick, and John Slattery; as was the case with Slattery and his castmates on Mad Men, the physical beauty of the performers is an artistically integral aspect of the show, as much as the wardrobe or the lighting or the cinematography.
But again, without actually hearing the way Jonas’s dialogue slinks and flitters from one intriguing idea and unexpected angle to the next, you can’t really understand Vladimir’s appeal. “Adapted from the sexy novel, starring a stacked cast, and not very good” is practically a genre unto itself, after all, but it’s not a genre to which this show belongs at all. Vladimir is a secret and dirty delight.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.