Storyville

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NR 8.5

1997 Documentary

Showcasing the best in international documentaries, Storyville has developed an enviable reputation since its inception more than a decade ago. Screening over 340 films, from some 70 different countries, the strand has garnered a staggering array of awards: five Oscars, 15 Griersons, three Peabodys and two International Emmys. In true, unique, Storyville style, the new series promises to deliver the strand's usual eclectic mix of compelling stories from across the globe.

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Episode 73 : Mr Vig and the Nun

December. 18,2007

Documentary about 82-year-old bachelor Vig, who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a young Russian nun, who by chance becomes part of his life. 50 years ago Vig bought Hesbjerg Castle, in the Danish countryside, with the intention of turning it into a monastery. Now he is about to realise his dream, with a group of Russian Orthodox nuns on their way. But the nuns have plans of their own, and Vig must realise that the road to fulfilment is different from that which he had imagined.

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Episode 72 : My Life as a Spy

December. 10,2007

A Storyville documentary first broadcast on 24 November 2003. Director Leslie Woodhead recalls his experiences as a 19-year-old National Serviceman in the late 1950s when he was recruited for secret Russian language training. Along with 5,000 other young conscripts he became a sleuth on the front line of the Cold War in Berlin, listening in on Soviet pilots, army units and naval exercises. Includes interviews with Alan Bennett and Michael Frayn, who were part of the same project.

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Episode 71 : 444 Days

November. 27,2007

444 Days offers a detailed insight into the troubled history between the USA and Iran, telling the story of the 1979 hostage crisis at the American Embassy in Tehran. On 4 November 1979, hundreds of Islamic students occupied the Embassy, taking 52 US diplomats hostage and beginning a siege that would topple a president. Featuring exclusive interviews with captors and victims, 444 Days delivers a gripping account of the crisis as it unfolded.

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Episode 70 : Hammer and Tickle

November. 22,2007

Ben Lewis's documentary tells the real history of Communism through the jokes told by ordinary people about the oppressive Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and its satellites. Jokes became the language of truth in a society denied free speech and confronted daily with the gap between political propaganda and reality.

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Episode 69 : The Russian Newspaper Murders

November. 21,2007

Documentary about the murders of six Russian journalists between 1995 and 2003 and the subsequent police investigation which some, including human rights lawyer Karen Nersisyan have seen as a cover up. The film also charts a Moscow newspaper's battle to maintain a critical voice in contemporary Russia.

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Episode 68 : Startup.com

November. 20,2007

Prize-winning documentary following two high-school friends over the course of a year as they begin an internet startup. A gripping tale of big money, suspense and intrigue.

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Episode 67 : Little Dieter Needs to Fly

November. 14,2007

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Episode 66 : The Madrid Connection

November. 13,2007

Documentary about the two men who became the leaders of the terrorist cell that committed the Madrid bombings of 2004, Europe's worst ever terrorist atrocity, in which 191 people died and nearly 2,000 were injured. The film looks at the connection between the worlds of religious extremism and the drug-dealing criminal underworld, the untold religious schism in the mosques of Spain and Europe, and how individuals are connected to Al Qaeda's ideology.

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Episode 65 : Wednesday

November. 06,2007

Film-maker Viktor Kossakovsky paints a revealing portrait of a generation growing up in a changing Russia. He returns to Leningrad to trace contemporaries and record the experience of a generation that grew up under Communism, only to encounter in adulthood the chaos of contemporary Russia.

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Episode 64 : Power Trip

November. 06,2007

Documentary telling the story of the chaotic post-Soviet transition in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, through culture clash, electricity disconnections and blackouts. AES Corp - an American global power company - struggles to train the formerly communist populace that, in this new world, customers must pay for their electricity, while the Georgians devise ever more clever ways to get it for free.

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Episode 63 : Gods of Brazil

October. 31,2007

Documentary telling the story of legendary Brazilian footballers Pele and Garrincha, whose emergence following Brazil's defeat at home in the 1950 World Cup Final heralded the dawn of a golden age of football for the country. But while one man became known as the world's greatest footballer, the other died a broken alcoholic at the age of 49.

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Episode 62 : Barca - The Inside Story

October. 30,2007

Behind the scenes at FC Barcelona, during their turbulent 2003/04 season, as a new management team try to claw the club out of debt and towards glory. Barca is a study of Barcelona Football Club from the inside, during one of its more traumatic years. This is a film about the business of football - you will see the players but ultimately you spend far more time with the people who do the contracts, figure out whether the club is going bust or not, and show up to every match with a sense of pride that is usually reserved for bright children at school. Barca is a rarity among football clubs, in the sense that its members and fans are also its shareholders. It's run by an attractive oligarchy of forty-something Catalan businessmen. Watch the chorizo consumption in the film - see how the managerial class get fatter and fatter as the season goes on, and as Barca manages to rescue itself from disaster, becoming a first-rate club again. Wonderful.

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Episode 61 : Gimme Shelter

October. 23,2007

Documentary by Albert and David Maysles recalling the events surrounding a free concert by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco in 1969. Worried about the security, the Stones asked the Hell's Angels to keep order for them, but the day ended tragically as violence broke out and a fan was killed.

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Episode 60 : Etre et avoir

October. 16,2007

Nicolas Philibert's documentary portrait of life in a tiny one-class primary school in the remote hills of France's Auvergne. A dedicated and inspirational teacher guides a class of just 13 pupils, aged from four upwards, through the delicate process of learning and growing up.

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Episode 59 : Bloody Cartoons

October. 15,2007

Life and livelihood were threatened when a small Danish newspaper chose to print a selection of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Karsten Kjaer looks at the events that resulted and travels the world to question the protesters and explore their motivations. He considers whether the cartoons could have affected the future of free speech. One of eleven Storyville documentaries screened as part of the worldwide Why Democracy? event.

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Episode 55 : Dinner with the President

October. 10,2007

Documentary in which President Musharraf explores the different worlds and influences on political life in Pakistan at a dinner in his official residence, the Army House. Labourers and intellectuals, journalists and industrialists add to the debate, as the role that a military leader can play in guiding a state towards modern democracy is questioned. One of eleven Storyville documentaries screened as part of the worldwide Why Democracy? event.

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Episode 54 : Looking for the Revolution

October. 09,2007

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Episode 53 : Taxi to the Dark Side

October. 08,2007

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Episode 52 : Russia's Village of Fools

October. 08,2007

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Episode 51 : Campaign! The Kawasaki Candidate

October. 08,2007

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Episode 50 : Sitting for Parliament

October. 08,2007

Following Belfast artist Noel Murphy as he completes a commission to paint all 108 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. One of eleven Storyville documentaries screened as part of the worldwide Why Democracy? event.

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Episode 49 : Egypt: We Are Watching You

October. 07,2007

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Episode 48 : Please Vote for Me

October. 07,2007

Weijun Chen's film takes us into the world of Chinese schoolchildren, learning about democracy for the first time as they try to vote for their class monitor. Elections are uncommon in China, so when the children in a school in Wuhan, Central China are presented with the chance to choose their own class monitor they don't quite know what to make of it. It doesn't take them long to get into the swing of it and soon all sorts of dirty tricks are going on. Urged on by their parents, the candidates launch elaborate campaigns of bribery and coercion. After tantrums and tears, it's finally time for the vote. Who will win - the sweet girl who woos her voters with her flute playing, the bully who beats his classmates or the boy who has the best sweets?

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Episode 46 : Belgrade Radio Warriors - Turn On, Tune In, Slob Out

October. 02,2007

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Episode 45 : Iraq in Fragments

September. 25,2007

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Episode 44 : The Undertaking

September. 18,2007

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Episode 43 : This Film is not Yet Rated

September. 17,2007

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Episode 42 : Glow of White Women

September. 11,2007

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Episode 41 : Hollywood Overnight

September. 10,2007

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Episode 40 : Riot On!

September. 10,2007

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Episode 39 : Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst

August. 29,2007

In 1974, a teenage newspaper heiress and Berkeley undergrad was kidnapped at gunpoint from her apartment, setting off one of the most bizarre episodes in recent American history. The kidnappers, completely off the map before Patty Hearst disappeared into the San Francisco night, were a small band of young, ferociously militant political radicals, dedicated to the rights of prisoners and the working class. They called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army. Over the course of about three years they robbed banks, senselessly killed two innocent people, instigated a firefight after attempting to shoplift a pair of socks, and, most famously, converted their hostage and victim. They also achieved an undeniable visionary manipulation of the media, inciting perhaps the first modern media frenzy.

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Episode 38 : Children and Cancer - A Lion in the House

August. 16,2007

Documentary which follows five families as they deal day-to-day with the challenges of living with children suffering from cancer, a film in which a possibly daunting and depressing subject is made involving and life-enhancing. With a rare intimacy and closeness, the presence of the camera seems to fade away and the viewer is left with no sense of being a voyeur as the story unfolds.

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Episode 37 : TV Junkie

August. 05,2007

Documentary about drug addiction. When he got a camera at the age of 14, Rick Kirkham began recording his life on tape. After his first break on TV he rose from local news to a job as correspondent for the daredevil magazine show Inside Edition. His girlfriend then got pregnant, and they married. Everything was golden... or was it? As well as capturing the good times, his camera shockingly reveals the dark side of his life with candour and vigour. What unfolds is a riveting journey into the heart and mind of a drug addict, with Rick's fight for survival caught on tape in an unprecedented way. He tries to be the devoted father and husband his family need, but his work assignments tip him back into his hellish cycle of drugs and despair. Directors Michael Cain and Matt Radecki have tackled the task of editing 3,000 hours of footage down to an intelligent and compassionate cautionary tale of a TV Junkie.

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Episode 36 : Every Good Marriage Begins with Tears

July. 18,2007

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Episode 35 : Office Tigers 4

July. 18,2007

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Episode 34 : Once in a Lifetime

July. 15,2007

The seventies in America were a time of growth and experimentation. Clothes became different, hairstyles exotic, and music was heading in strange new directions. With a wave of high-profile imports it was hoped soccer might become the next big thing. Players, coaches and journalists recall the The Cosmos, the high octane New York club whose all-star team were equally famed for their antics at Studio 54 as for their footballing skills.

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Episode 33 : Office Tigers 3

July. 11,2007

Four-part series which goes inside the closed world of Western corporate outsourcing in the Indian town of Chennai. It's based around the ambitious Office Tiger employees such as Amita and Sunita, who eagerly soak up the language and style of their bosses while holding on to the aspects of their own culture that serve them best, and the Americans who strive to guide them, including Joe (co-CEO), a former Goldman Sachs banker who never sleeps and is always asking his workers for more effort.

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Episode 32 : Office Tigers 2

July. 04,2007

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Episode 31 : Office Tigers 1

June. 27,2007

First of a four-part series which goes inside the closed world of Western corporate outsourcing in the Indian town of Chennai. It's based around ambitious Office Tiger employees such as Amita and Sunita, who eagerly soak up the language and style of their bosses while holding on to the aspects of their own culture that serve them best, and the Americans who strive to guide them, including Joe (co-CEO), a former Goldman Sachs banker who believes in pushing himself and his workers to the limit.

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Episode 30 : Kike Like Me

June. 27,2007

Documentary in which filmmaker Jamie Kastner goes on a personal journey to find out what it means to be Jewish in the modern world. Along the way he meets anti-semitic politician Pat Buchanan, Israeli novelist AB Yehoshua, British anti-Israeli curmudgeon Richard Ingrams and Hasids in Brooklyn; he causes a near-riot in a Parisian suburb simply by asking what people think about Jews; and he meets the 'dominatrix' behind Berlin's largest memorial to dead Jews

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Episode 29 : Paris Brothel

June. 26,2007

Mark Kidel's film looks at the unique licensed brothels of Paris which remained a central part of French life until their closure in 1946.

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Episode 28 : Winged Migration

June. 19,2007

Oscar-nominated documentary on the migratory patterns of birds, filmed over the course of three years on all seven continents. Stunning techniques help contribute to this bird's eye view of the world.

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Episode 27 : Laughing with Hitler

June. 09,2007

Documentary which examines the history of the Third Reich through the jokes told by and about the Nazis and the fate that befell some of the joke tellers. In the early days of the Nazi era, jokes about Hitler were punishable as treason, and during the war they were even seen as unpatriotic, a crime punishable by death. Cabaret artiste, Werner Finck, was imprisoned in a concentration camp, but then released, while actor Fritz Muliar's anti-Hitler jokes landed him in a penal battalion in Russia.

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Episode 26 : Why We Fight

June. 08,2007

What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine. Why We Fight is the provocative new documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Eugene Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger) and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Named after the series of short films by legendary director Frank Capra that explored America’s reasons for entering World War II, Why We Fight surveys a half-century of military conflicts, asking how – and answering why – a nation of, by and for the people has become the savings-and-loan of a government system whose survival depends on an Orwellian state of constant war.

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Episode 25 : Journeys with George

June. 07,2007

Alexandra Pelosi's informal portrait of George W Bush, filmed over nearly a year as she followed the then president-to-be as part of the press corps travelling with him on planes and buses. She learns a lot about the man, and asks whether it is possible to spend so much time with someone without attaining any degree of intimacy.

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Episode 24 : Heirs to an Execution

June. 06,2007

Documentary in which Ivy Meeropol tells the story of how her family was torn apart in 1953 when her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed for 'conspiracy to commit espionage'. Their names were seared into American history that day as both martyrs and 'atom spies', but the young Jewish couple left behind two orphaned boys - Ivy's dad Michael, and six-year-old Robert. The film sheds new light on a chapter in American history and provides a personal perspective on an iconic event.

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Episode 23 : Oswald's Ghost

June. 05,2007

Documentary which deconstructs the mythologies and controversy surrounding the JFK assassination. Featuring interviews with Norman Mailer, Gary Hart, Tom Hayden, Mark Lane and others, it probes the deep psychic wounds it made on American politics and culture, leading to a decade of governmental skullduggery, political paranoia, demagoguery and division on a huge scale. With the subsequent assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 and the revelation of President Nixon's constitutional subversion in the early 70s, the last hopes of American idealism were shattered.

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Episode 22 : RFK

June. 05,2007

David Grubin's probing and perceptive biography reassesses the remarkable and tragic life of Bobby Kennedy, whose early life was spent in the shadow of his elder brother John. After JFK's assassination, he discovered his own identity in the forefront of American politics before his career was also tragically curtailed by an assassin's bullet.

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Episode 21 : How Vietnam Was Lost

June. 04,2007

Based on David Maraniss's book 'They Marched into Sunlight', a documentary telling the story of two seemingly unconnected events in October 1967 that changed the course of the Vietnam War. Whilst a US battalion unwittingly marched into a Viet Cong ambush which killed 61 young men, half a world away angry students at the University of Wisconsin were protesting the presence of Dow Chemical recruiters on campus.

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Episode 20 : Children of the Chinese Circus

May. 29,2007

Documentary looking at Shanghai Circus school, where the gruelling training regimes result in some of the best acrobats and circus performers in the world. Children as young as eight have their unformed bodies stretched and tested to breaking point as they learn to master the most taxing feats of acrobatic grace and daring. Harsh demands are also made of teachers and parents as their proteges strive to be number one in the circus, the Chinese way.

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Episode 19 : Black Sun

May. 22,2007

Documentary about Hugues de Montalembert, blinded in a random street mugging in 1978, but who defied expectation and continued to travel the world, alone. Using Montalembert's own voiceover to show how he dealt with the life-changing event, film-maker and composer Gary Tarn constructs a poetic meditation on an extraordinary life without vision.

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Episode 18 : How Much Is Your Life Worth?

May. 15,2007

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Episode 17 : Oswald's Ghost

May. 08,2007

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Episode 16 : Cuba! Africa! Revolution -2

May. 01,2007

Second of a two-part documentary telling the story of Cuba's interventions in Africa from the 1960s onwards and the USA's response, which captures the superpower rivalry, revolutionary idealism and the events that sowed the seeds of later wars. From Che Guevara's campaign in the Congo to the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, Jihan El Tahri shows how Cuba tried to carve out an alternative path for Third World nations, with unique archive stills and footage of Che and Fidel Castro.

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Episode 15 : Cuba! Africa! Revolution -1

April. 24,2007

First of a two-part documentary telling the story of Cuba's interventions in Africa from the 1960s onwards and the USA's response, which captures the superpower rivalry, revolutionary idealism and the events that sowed the seeds of later wars. From Che Guevara's campaign in the Congo to the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, Jihan El Tahri shows how Cuba tried to carve out an alternative path for Third World nations, with unique archive stills and footage of Che and Fidel Castro.

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Episode 14 : A Story Of People In War And Peace

April. 17,2007

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Episode 13 : Screamers

March. 29,2007

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Episode 11 : Abduction - The Megumi Yokota Story

March. 22,2007

The remarkable story of a 13-year-old Japanese girl abducted by North Korean agents while on her way home from school. For twenty years, her parents remained unaware of her fate.

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Episode 10 : New York Doll

October. 23,2007

Documentary which details the turbulent history of controversial American proto-punk rockers The New York Dolls through the eyes of bassist Arthur Kane, telling the story of the band from its formation, through drug problems and the deaths of several members. After the Dolls' break up in 1975 Kane faded away into virtual obscurity and battled alcoholism in LA, but in 2004, Morrissey asked the surviving three New York Dolls to play at London's 2004 Meltdown Festival, of which he was the curator.

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Episode 9 : This Film Is Not Rated

March. 01,2007

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Episode 8 : So Much, So Fast

February. 21,2007

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Episode 7 : Milosevic On Trial - 2

February. 14,2007

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Episode 6 : Milosevic On Trial - 1

February. 12,2007

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Episode 5 : Godless In America

February. 07,2007

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Episode 4 : Heir To An Execution

January. 31,2007

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Episode 3 : Diameter Of The Bomb

January. 24,2007

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Episode 2 : My Friend Sasha, A Very Russian Murder

January. 22,2007

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Episode 1 : Blog Wars

January. 17,2007

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Seasons

Season 28

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Season 28 2024

Season 27

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Season 27 2023

Season 26

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Season 26 2022

Season 25

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Season 25 2021

Season 24

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Season 24 2020

Season 23

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Season 23 2019

Season 22

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Season 22 2018

Season 21

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Season 21 2017

Season 20

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Season 20 2016

Season 19

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Season 19 2015

Season 18

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Season 18 2014

Season 17

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Season 17 2013

Season 16

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Season 16 2012

Season 15

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Season 15 2011

Season 14

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Season 14 2010

Season 13

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Season 13 2009

Season 12

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Season 12 2008

Season 11

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Season 11 2007

Season 10

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Season 10 2006

Season 9

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Season 9 2005

Season 8

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Season 8 2004

Season 7

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Season 7 2003

Season 6

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Season 6 2002

Season 2

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Season 2 1998

Season 1

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Season 1 1997

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