Alternatywy 4 (1986)

Directed by

Stanisław Bareja

Genre

comedy drama

Country

Poland

Length

1 season, 9 episodes

Rating

8.4 of 10 from 30 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The series satirizes the absurdities of daily life under Communist rule in Poland. It follows residents of a new housing block and their clashes with bureaucracy and each other.

satiricalnostalgicwrylightheartedcleverobservationaldatedplayful

What happens

4 Alternative Street (Polish: Alternatywy 4, [ˌaltɛrnaˈtɨvɨ ˈʧ̑tɛrɨ]) is a Polish comedy TV series that was completed in 1983 and, due to the censorship, first aired only in 1986. Many famous Polish actors appeared in the series. The filming location used in Alternatywy 4 was a residential complex, still in existence at 3 Marii Grzegorzewskiej Street in Warsaw, Poland. The series was a satire of life under the Communist rule in Poland. The series title is a result of a dispute among local councilors on what to name a new street in the development (in episode 3). Annoyed by the lack of consensus, one of them quips: "There must be some alternative". The dialogues, which intended to ridicule the absurdities of everyday life of the times, had to be written in a way that they would be approved by the censorship office. Even then, some scenes had to be removed from the final cut. Thirty years after the series was filmed, it underwent a digital reconstruction and the initially deleted scenes were added, after they had been found in the archives of TVP. In 2005, one of the streets in Ursynów district, where the series plot had taken place, was officially named Alternatywy to commemorate the series. The residential building, where most of the scenes were shot, bears a plaque, that aside from the actual street name (M. Grzegorzewskiej 3) also contains an inscription, "Formerly Alternatywy 4". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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