The main heroines of the Polish series 'Girls from Lviv'
She is Ukrainian, smart, beautiful, and works as a cleaner. He is Polish, a successful and wealthy lawyer, her employer. She is head over heels in love with him and pampers him with borscht and varenyky to somehow attract his attention. He devours Ukrainian dishes with gusto and cannot remember her name. So for convenience, he calls her Masha (that was the name of her predecessor). This is one of the storylines of the new Polish series 'Girls from Lviv' ('Dziewczyny ze Lwowa').
Over 3.5 million Poles (that is, almost every tenth resident of the country) invariably turn on the first national TV channel TVP on Sundays to empathize with four young Ukrainian women who illegally clean apartments in Warsaw and try to find their happiness there. The series is breaking ratings records and surprising Polish TV critics. Many of them do not understand what caused such a stir, accusing the screenwriters of using a lot of stereotypes.
Perhaps the creators of 'Girls from Lviv' were inspired by the cult American series 'Sex and the City.' Even the opening credits are similar, only in the Polish version it is, of course, the skyline of Warsaw, not New York. If we set aside the fact that the Americans are talking about New York socialites, and the Poles are talking about poor Ukrainian cleaners, the very ideas of the series are quite similar.
This is the life and adventures of four close girlfriends in a modern metropolis. They try to find their happiness and support each other in difficult situations. As in 'Sex and the City,' the characters of 'Girls from Lviv' are very vividly drawn. They are not alike; each is charismatic in her own way.
Sveta is the most experienced, sensible, and the longest-legged. By education, she is a chemist. She has been working as a cleaner in Poland for three years, is well versed in cleaning products, and takes life seriously. She does not mind sharing her room with three friends who also came to seek a better fate in Poland.
Polina is reckless, tenacious, openly sexy, a former owner of a bankrupt modeling agency. Her boyfriend (also now ex) cheated on her with models right on the couch in her office.
Ulyana is smart, proper, unsmiling. A violinist, graduate of the Lviv Conservatory. To afford a bus ticket to Poland, she sold her concert violin with tears in her eyes.
Olya is the youngest and the most foolish of the four friends. Completely slow and unadaptable, she finds it hardest to find a job. In Lviv, she left behind a drunkard fiancé Igorek, who does not want to work and constantly extorts money from her. By the way, all Ukrainian men from the past of the four friends invariably turn out to be either alcoholics or scoundrels.
The young women, except for Olya, have children left at home with grandparents. In the evenings, they communicate with them via Skype, and then have a collective girls' cry. All four heroines are played by Polish actresses. They diligently imitate a Ukrainian accent, using Ukrainian words instead of similar Polish ones. The creators of the series say they also tried Ukrainian actresses for the roles, but none passed the casting.
The main heroines are naive, nice, decent. It is easy to empathize with them. The authors of the series are not too ceremonious with their compatriots. Polish men in the series often view Ukrainian women as objects of sexual harassment. For example, one employer wants Polina to clean naked in only a white apron. True, he is ready to pay her more for it.
And some Polish women in the series are real Saltychikhas and merciless exploiters. So, Olya's landlady takes her to the clinic and forces her to take a test for venereal diseases and AIDS. And she deducts the money for this test from her salary.
True, kind and responsive Poles also come across the path of Ukrainian women. This is, first of all, Pan Henryk, the elderly owner of the apartment where the series' heroines live. He treats his tenants with fatherly warmth, charging only $20 a month from each for rent. There is also an exalted young actress who sees Sveta more as a friend than a cleaner, and is much more willing to resort to her help for learning roles than for cleaning the apartment.
According to rough estimates, up to half a million Ukrainians work in Poland, many of them illegally. For decades, Poland was a country from which people emigrated. And suddenly Poland became what Germany or Great Britain used to be for it. After all, for Ukrainians, this is the West! 'What is shown in the series is life, and its stories are also our stories. Or maybe primarily ours,' says the series director Wojciech Adamczyk in an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza. 'About what we are like, and what we can be. And we can be very different.' Most likely, in 'Girls from Lviv,' Poles recognize themselves. After all, up to now, more than a million of their compatriots work abroad.
As Deutsche Welle notes, the series turned out to be so successful that everyone expects a continuation. In the Polish media, there are even rumors that the second season will deal, among other things, with the events on Maidan in the winter of 2014. In the first season, the action takes place in the fall of 2013. Perhaps the authors deliberately tried to avoid politics. Or maybe, hoping for success, they left room for maneuver. In any case, Polish fans of the series will eagerly await the continuation of the adventures of the Lviv Cinderellas in Warsaw.