Stir the borscht and break out the bling — we’re going to Brighton Beach.
Lifetime’s new reality series, “Russian Dolls,” makes stars out of the women of one of the city’s largest immigrant communities. While most female-centric reality series offer little more than shrieking and shopping, this one opens a window onto the old-world tensions that exist between mothers and daughters, and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.
The series was a labor of love of co-executive producers Alina Dizik and Elina Miller, Russian immigrants from Chicago who wanted to film their culture and chose Brighton Beach as the location.
“It’s the Russian mecca,” says Miller, who adds that the show emphasizes the women because they “are very strong and opinionated. We just wanted to show their place in the community.”
Dizik and Miller partnered with Left/Right productions. “The idea and the little bit of tape we saw was so fresh and interesting to me,” says executive producer Banks Tarver, who first went out to Brighton Beach when he moved to New York from Texas and spent an evening at Rasputin, the lavish Russian restaurant and cabaret co-owned by one of the “Dolls,” Marina Levitis and her husband, Michael.
If every female-centric reality show must have its diva, then Marina fills that slot with aplomb on “Russian Dolls.” Emigrating from Rostov when she was 14, she is a vivacious mother of two who lives in a Manhattan Beach McMansion and has seen the boardwalk community evolve from “a simple place filled with old ladies and just Russian stores” under the train tracks on Brighton Beach Avenue to something more hip with upscale stores and expensive condos that flank the boardwalk.
“The whole community became a lot more sophisticated,” Marina says. She and her husband have been married for 14 years and bought the club five years ago while Michael, an attorney, was working in an office and Marina, who has a merchandising degree from FIT, was helping out.
“It was very boring, very 9-to-5,” she says. “We were offered Rasputin. We were young and we could do something with it. People get a genuine Russian cabaret show. If you want to party all night till 5 a.m., you can do it.”
“Russian Dolls” showcases Marina’s life as a businesswoman, but more revealing are scenes that spotlight the tensions between her and mother-in-law Eva, whose unabashed theatricality is a cause of constant embarrassment.
“She’s nobody to me,” Marina says in the first episode.
The bone of contention is Eva’s appearance in the Grandma Pageant, an annual talent show for older women at National, another Brighton club. It’s one of the immigrant traditions that “Russian Dolls” fits in nicely between soundbites about plastic surgery and shopping. Marina tries without success to convince Eva not to wear a belly dancing costume at the pageant — and rudely walks out of the performance.
The battles don’t always revolve around who is getting more attention, though. “Russian Doll” Diana Kosov breaks off a relationship with Paul, a young man she is dating, because he’s not Russian.
“Without my parents’ permission, I don’t think I can do that,” says Diana, 23, who was born in Moldova. “It was very difficult. I was concerned mostly about my mother and what she would think.”
Many media observers have speculated that “Russian Dolls” will embarrass the Russian community much in the way that “Jersey Shore” has been the bane of existence for many Italian-Americans. But the “Dolls” don’t agree.
“I’m very, very busy so I did not see ‘Jersey Shore,’” says Sheepshead Bay resident Renata Krumer, 47, who came to Brooklyn from Belarus in her 20s and has her own Russian-language radio show, “Radio Pozitiv,” on 87.7 FM. “I know it’s about kids and it’s a little crazy. But I don’t worry about negative publicity.”
Still, Krumer’s son, David, refused to appear on the show with her. “He said, ‘Mom, you have such a good reputation in the community. Did you sign a contract with them? If you look normal [on the show], I’ll be with you next time.”
RUSSIAN DOLLS
Thursday, 10:30 p.m., Lifetime
