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And season 2 is even better than the first. It becomes a noir detective story set in Silicon Valley, where kids, one of whom is played by Zendaya, are disappearing after competing in a VR game on an app. Shot with a more polished look, season 2 is slightly less bleak than the character drama of season 1. There are even attempts at humor -- Marling is no stranger to comedy, appearing in Community and British series Babylon.

As Russia's defence ministry said its forces were 'tightening the noose' around the city, a woman called Svitlana gave a harrowing account of her flight from the city - and the horrors faced by those who have chosen, or been forced, to stay.

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Passing twisted trees, blackened homes and abandoned vehicles, the mother appears to clutch the hand of her child, perhaps fearful that another deadly barrage of Russian shells or rockets is seconds away.

The OA doesn't abide by any strict TV series formula either. The opening credits don't appear until 57 minutes into the show. It was written like an eight-hour film, with a novelistic approach. You don't meet some of the main characters until a third of the way through.

Ukrainian MP Dmytro Gorin, whose parents are trapped in the city, said the Russians have dropped hundreds of bombs on the city and that conditions are medieval, adding: 'People are out of food and, more importantly, out of water.'

In fact, the Russian armed forces have faced fierce resistance from Ukrainian soldiers that has battled them to a standstill, inflicted heavy losses, and forced Putin's commanders to resort to brutal siege warfare that has so far yielded few results. 

Jeffrey Edmonds, a former CIA and National Security Council official, told : 'It is hard to imagine some senior intelligence person talking with Putin and not telling Putin what he wants to hear, especially if it is a belief that is deeply held, like Putin's beliefs about Ukraine.'

Officials say 2,500 have perished since Russian forces poured across the Ukrainian border on February 24. About 35,000 people are believed to have escaped in recent days, many on foot and under Russian fire, but 300,000 remain.

'My family was in the bomb shelter of High School No 2. Three days ago a shell shattered some of the windows. A woman was wounded in her hip. She laid all night on the first floor asking for someone to give her poison so that she would not feel the pain.'

Where will it hit? There is no food, no medicine. When there will be no more snow people won't be able to go out for water. The dead are not taken out. The police recommend to open the windows and put the corpses on the balcony.'

It glues itself together with realistic, loyal characters bonded by their harrowing shared ordeals. There's even a believable love story, a flicker of warmth amid the creepy science, cryptic puzzles and trippy imagery.

Some cultural bodies have prompted accusations of McCarthyism - the anti-Russian hysteria whipped up during the 1950s - for rushing to cancel Russian culture in response to Vladimir Putin's (above) invasion order

The 60-year-old author - born in St Petersburg to Russian parents and assigned mandatory military service assisting the KGB - has been forced to flee his home in Kyiv with his English wife, Elizabeth, and their three children.

Shelling has hampered efforts to rescue hundreds of civilians, including women and children, who are believed trapped in the bombed ruins of the Drama Theatre, destroyed by a Russian air strike on Wednesday despite the word 'Children' being clearly written on the square outside to alert pilots.

That's right. Forget Marvel. This is the show to watch if you want a rich, existential look at the interconnectedness of all things. The world of the OA is vast and the way it works follows the most unexpected rules.

Soldatov previously told that most FSB agents are brought into the service as legacy hires based on their parents or grandparents being agents and are removed from mainstream schools to be educated in-house.

Bulgakov, born in Kyiv to a Russian family, wrote about the horrors of the Russian revolution and many of his works were banned by the Soviet government, although Joseph Stalin was known to be fond of one of his plays.

‘With all great literature, like the great Russian masters, there is a sort of universality that resonates with people.
They write about the human condition and in reading them we realise that people from 19th century Russia - or indeed modern day Russia - have many of the same difficulties, hopes and dreams that we have in the west.'

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