As history teacher, I was interested by portraits of the lead characters. The accuracy was always a problem for historical series. Surprising, the portraits are more than decent. Sure, Sergey Bezrukov is far to be a new name in Russian cinematography and Sergey Makovetsky gives exactly the image of Ivan Vasilievich who you expect. The humor is another virtue of this episode, like the clothes, atmosphere, rooms. The sin - maybe the last part . The lost of child, the murder of father are presented so superficial than it is almost embarassing. Sure, long story, one hour episode but , just discovering the episode as a sketch, few scenes could be cut for a more substantial last minutes. But , sure, the good portraits are the basic virtue of thi promissing series.
