‘Vladimir’ series review: Rachel Weisz steams up the screen

Rachel Weisz dazzles in Vladimir, a sharp, sexy Netflix mini‑series that probes power, desire, and academia in eight smart, bingeable episodes

Vladimir, based on Julia May Jonas’s novel of the same name is stupendous, sexy and smart. Set in the rarefied world of academia, and further still in the highbrow, navel-gazing fishbowl of an English Literature department, the mini-series follows the protagonist M (an incandescent Rachel Weisz) through a turbulent time in her life.

Once a beloved, golden couple on campus with M’s creative writing courses being the hot ticket, and her husband, John, (John Slattery) the chair of the English Department being feted by all as a brilliant poet, now find their lives coming apart at the seams. M has to deal with increasing feelings of being obsolete and a crippling writer’s block while John is suspended after his students accuse him of having sex with them.

Into this heightened cauldron of emotions, walks in the devastatingly handsome, Vladimir (Leo Woodall), the newly hired assistant professor for the English department. Vladimir is a hotshot writer with one successful book under his belt. M is instantly smitten and soon finds herself fantasising about him at inopportune moments.

Vladimir’s wife, Cynthia (Jessica Henwick), also a writer, has been hired as adjunct professor and M finds to her dismay that her students are gravitating towards her class. Meanwhile Sid (Ellen Robertson), M’s 27-year-old daughter and an attorney, is shocked by the allegations against John and insists on helping. She faces troubles of her own, including a fraught relationship with a girlfriend who wants children, and the loss of her job.

M finds her life coming unravelled as she is increasingly obsessed with Vladimir even as her family constantly calls and messages her. Vladimir wears its love for literature lightly as quotes from T.S. Eliot and DH Lawrence (“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically”) float organically.

There is also the name Vladimir, reminding us of Vladimir Nabokov and Lolita with the tables being turned and the man being the object of desire.