Meet the Russians

Episode one
After ‘Made in Chelsea’, freakshow telly takes a few more leaps up the social strata with this look at the lives of Russians in London. The cast includes android-esque billionaire Mohammed – who’s invested £12 million in his tone-deaf wife’s singing career – jewel-studded fashion designers Julia and Alina and lots of people who seemingly exist purely to go to parties.

But they’re not all tasteless, super-rich morons. Take Dimitri, a fashion photographer and aspiring scenester, who left Russia to find a place where he could embrace his homosexuality. He’s as vapid as the rest, naturally, but there’s something undeniably sweet about his wide-eyed, gleeful stroll along Old Compton Street, epicentre of gay London.

Taken at face value, then, ‘Meet the Russians’ has pulled off the rare feat of being both trashy and socially relevant. Whether it can resist the descent into outrage-provoking sensationalism is another question, but if Dimitri’s camp, shrill exclamation of ‘maaaajor!’ doesn't become a hashtag, we'll eat our oversized bearskin hats.