Entrance to the Maze (Season 1)

Entrance to the Maze (1990) is a Soviet mystery miniseries you can watch online on iFILM, based on the Vainer brothers' novella Medicine Against Fear and directed by Valery Kremnyov. It runs on two parallel timelines — contemporary Perestroika-era Moscow and medieval Europe.

Investigator Muromtsev (Igor Kostolevsky) picks up what looks like a routine case: con men in stolen police uniforms are robbing apartments, targeting only people who cannot go to the authorities. The trail leads deeper — into the shadow economy and a classified drug called metaprotizol, described abroad as medicine against fear. Running alongside this, a medieval physician and alchemist named Paracelsus appears in portraits and visions, his story rhyming with the modern one in ways that grow stranger as the series progresses.

The Vainer brothers also wrote The Era of Mercy, which Govorukhin turned into the beloved Soviet classic Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed — but this novella works differently. Less about the chase, more about what fear does to people when it is weaponized. Stream the full series on iFILM.