The Putin Interviews - Season 1, Episode 03

As journalism, this is scattershot at best, but as a conversation that covers a vast span of Russian history, culture, and politics as refracted through the mind of Russia's president -- it's often remarkable.

Are The Putin Interviews an instance of Stone hanging or drowning? Not that it matters  --  the series is DOA, either way.

Stone's strength when interrogating Putin on the election hacking only underscores his weakness when discussing the strongman's social policies.

For students of politics, there is almost as much gold in these programmes as in Putin's chapel.

The special is solicitous, even obsequious, but sometimes revealing anyway.

However charitable one might feel about his intentions, this was a case where a few clear rules were surely in order.

In the absence of startling revelations, what's fascinating about this elaborate production is the theater of it all.

It was a match made in heaven.

It's not every interview-driven documentary that's a pleasure to look at, but The Putin Interviews is much more visually dynamic than either of its on-camera subjects.

It's riveting in how dangerous and intimate it feels, leveraging its multiple camera-angles and hand-held shots to make the viewer feel as if they, too, are in the room with Vladimir Putin.

Over time the value of The Putin Interviews will probably rise: they are an exceptional document of a world-changing leader speaking at great length. But at this moment they are drained of immediate impact by virtue of being overtaken by events...

The conversations are conducted via a Russian translator, and you have to be in the mood to read a lot of subtitles to engage with Putin and Stone's policy discussions, but that small effort is well worth it.