General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Prestupleniye i nakazaniye (2024 TV series)

Prestupleniye i nakazaniye (Преступление и наказание, "Crime and Punishment") is a 2024 Russian drama series directed by Vladimir Mirzoev for the Kinopoisk streaming platform, a modern-day adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1866 novel of the same name. The action is moved to St. Petersburg in the 21st century, where the impoverished student Rodion Raskolnikov kills an old woman who lends money at microloan rates to test his theory that certain people have the right to commit vile acts if they make great discoveries and move the world forward; the investigator Porfiry Petrovich then works to obtain his confession.¹

Key fact	Detail
Platform and year	Kinopoisk, Russia, 2024, one season; digital release 2 November 2024¹
Genre and rating	Drama, crime; age rating 18+; episode length 52 minutes¹
Director and screenplay	Vladimir Mirzoev; screenplay by Anastasia Mirzoeva and Fyodor Dostoevsky (credited as source)¹
Lead cast	Ivan Yankovsky, Lyubov Aksyonova, Tikhon Zhiznevsky, Vladimir Mishukov, Alyona Mikhailova, Vladislav Abashin, Yuliya Snigir, Nikita Tarasov¹
Episode count	10-episode drama³
Reception	Kinopoisk user rating 5.8 from 216,716 votes; IMDb 4.5 from 490 votes; Russian film critics gave 10 positive and 12 negative assessments (45%)¹

Spoilers

Plot and interpretation

The series is set in St. Petersburg in the summer of the 21st century. Raskolnikov, exhausted by poverty, unemployment, and thoughts of the meaninglessness of his existence, develops the idea that some people have the right to the most vile acts if they make great discoveries and move the world forward; to test the theory on himself he kills an old woman who makes money from microloans.¹ The cast list includes the novel's principal figures, with Dmitry Razumikhin as Raskolnikov's friend and Alyona Mikhailova as Sonya Marmeladova.⁴

A dream-like Petersburg. A central device of the adaptation is that viewers are taken not into a real Petersburg but into a kind of mirror world, emphasized by shots of the inverted city. In the novel dreams play an important role in revealing the characters, and the director went further by placing the entire action inside a dream.¹ The atmosphere is built from natural and artificial light sources, everyday details, and allusions to the late 19th century, the 1990s, and the present.¹ A scholarly comparison of screen versions notes that, unlike earlier films that stressed symbolic objects, the Mirzoev series places its emphasis on a substantial change of the historical and literary context, while still conveying the significance of the Napoleonic myth in Raskolnikov's fate.⁸

Production and development

In February 2022 the magazine Variety reported that the director Vladimir Mirzoev, previously known for Her Name Was Mumu and Inside the Killer, would make a series based on Dostoevsky's novel.² According to Mirzoev, the idea of adapting Crime and Punishment came to him before the pandemic, while he was working on the series Topi in Minsk.¹ The producers were Mikhail Kitaev, Vladimir Maslov, and Olga Filipuk, who had worked with Mirzoev on the detective series Inside the Killer (2024).² Information about the cast appeared in autumn 2023, when Ivan Yankovsky, who had already worked with Mirzoev, was invited to play the lead.⁷

Mirzoev described the project as an authorial interpretation rather than a straightforward adaptation, saying in interviews that what mattered to him was not to reproduce the novel but to speak with Dostoevsky in the language of the 21st century.⁶ The producer Mikhail Kitaev characterized the result as a bold adaptation that follows the text of the classic work almost verbatim even though the events unfold in the present day.¹¹

Release history

The premiere was scheduled for 26 October 2024 in the Kinopoisk online cinema, but the release did not take place on that day and was postponed several times afterward.³ On 29 October 2024 Kinopoisk removed the series from its release schedule and moved the premiere to an indefinite date.⁵ The first four episodes were then released on 2 November 2024 at 22:00.² A week after the Russian premiere, the series began being prepared for an international release under the title Crime & Punishment.⁶

Reception

The release divided audiences into two camps: those who rejected the new reading of the classic outright and those who accepted the authorial interpretation.¹ On Kinopoisk the series holds a user rating of 5.8 based on 216,716 votes, while on IMDb it stands at 4.5 from 490 votes; among Russian film critics, 10 of 22 assessments were positive, giving a 45 percent approval figure.¹ Reviewers noted the stylized, atmospheric production but questioned choices such as the anachronistic settings, the musical decisions, and the treatment of characters like Dunya, whose arc departs from the novel.¹

Place among adaptations

The 2024 series is one of many screen versions of the novel. An early Soviet film adaptation appeared in 1969 with Georgi Taratorkin in the lead role, and a 2007 Russian series based on the novel received high ratings, 7.9 on Kinopoisk and 7.6 on IMDb.² The 2024 version stands apart from these by moving the story entirely into the present and into a dream framework, a choice that produced both its critical attention and much of the controversy around it.¹^•⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026