Mobster makes real-life mafia show

MOSCOW (Hollywood Reporter) - A Russian mob boss, fed up with the "unrealistic mafia shows" usually shown on television has taken matters into his own hands by creating his own series.


Vitali Dyomochka, who has a string of convictions and has done time for shooting a rival mafioso, stars in "Spets," a seven-part series set in and around the Pacific port city of Vladivostok. The port is more than 5,700 miles and seven times zones east of Moscow.


Dyomochka also wrote, directed, produced and financed the series, in which other members of his Podstava gang appear.


The gang takes it name from the Russian term for an insurance fraud in which criminals stage car crashes in order to claim grossly exaggerated compensation from other drivers.


Police frequently visited locations during filming to question Dyomochka about alleged crimes. Ten members of the cast have been imprisoned since filming wrapped, and one has been killed.


The series, based on real-life events in the brutal turf wars fought between rival gangs engaged in car crime, is screening on the town's local television station, Ussuriysk TV. The final episode is due to air next Sunday.


"There was something of a moral dilemma when we first discussed the series, but the quality and strength of the plots and acting won us over," Ussuriysk TV general director Ksenia Kerezhan said. "These are true stories portrayed in a vividly dramatic way."


The series, which has been airing on Sunday nights to the town's 26,000 viewers and a further 150,000 people who live in the region, had achieved "practically 100 percent ratings," with a big leap between the screening of the first episode and the second, Kerezhan added.


Dyomochka said he hopes to make a feature-length film and sees filmmaking as a way out of a criminal career.


"I would rather work in film than the criminal world, and this is my chance to do so," he said.


Reuters/Hollywood Reporter