Volshebnyy uchastok

Volshebny uchastok (Russian: Волшебный участок, Magic Precinct) is a Russian comedy television series directed by Stepan Gordeev. The main role was played by Nikolai Naumov. The premiere took place on November 9, 2023, on the online streaming service Okko.^[1] The television premiere took place on March 25, 2024, on the TNT channel.

Okko renewed the show "Magic Precinct" for a second season,^[2] which premiered on November 6, 2025.

The protagonist of the series is Lekha Popov (Nikolai Naumov), a former police sniper who, by coincidence, gets a job at an unusual police station. It is called the "Department for Combating Fairy-tale Crimes" (abbreviated DCFC; Russian: ОБСП). Its employees investigate crimes committed by fairy-tale characters living secretly among people. Soon Lekha realizes that his own blood is not quite ordinary — just like that of his young niece, whose guardian he becomes.

• Nikolai Naumov as Lekha / Alexey Popov, a former police sniper
• Eva Smirnova as Vasilisa Popova, Katya's daughter
• Maria Akhmetzyanova as Katya / Ekaterina Popova, Lekha's sister
• Andrey Dobrovolsky as Mikhalych / Nikolai Mikhailovich Bokov, police major, head of the department
• Filipp Yankovsky as Raven / Vadim Demidovich Voronov, colonel
• Darya Melnikova as Lena / Elena Fedotova, police captain
• Alexey Zolotovitsky as Oleg Zayats, senior police lieutenant
• Maria Smolnikova as Valentina Alexandrovna Krasnova, Mikhalych's secretary, Baba Yaga's daughter
• Tatyana Dogileva as Baba Yaga
• Ilya Sobolev as the foul-mouthed gnome
• Pavel Derevyanko as Zmey Gorynych
• Olga Medynich as the Snow Queen
• Gosha Kutsenko as Elizarov, police captain
• Yury Skulyabin as the Merman
• Alexey Kirsanov as Egor Gordeev, operative
• Igor Gasparyan as Rashid, a jinni
• Ida Galich as Baba Yaga's web avatar
• Sergey Chikhachyov as Berendey
• Lev Zulkarnaev as the Upyr (Ghoul)
• Nikita Kologrivy as the young Raven
• Viktor Bychkov as Merlin
• Anna Ukolova as the Mistress of the Copper Mountain

The series was produced by the Originals Production center and the "Mesto Sily" film company exclusively for the online cinema Okko. Filming took place from October 2022^[3] to February 2023 in Moscow. The prototype for the police station building was the headquarters of the TASS news agency, located on Tverskoy Boulevard.^[4]

In early November 2023, at a pre-premiere screening of the series, showrunner Alexander Noskov announced that the script for the second season was ready.^[5] The story of the second season unfolds in Saint Petersburg. According to the plot, the main character, together with the DCFC team, gets on Koschei's trail and goes to Saint Petersburg, where they have to unravel many fairy-tale mysteries, investigate local crimes, find Vasilisa, and face an incredible force that could destroy the whole world. There are no fewer evil spirits in the city on the Neva than on the banks of the Moskva River, so the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, Danila-Master, Cupid, Emelyanov the Fisherman, the Mermaid, the Golem, the Mushroom from Ryazan - Seryoga, Ognevushka-Poskakushka, Trolls, and a whole crowd of local gnomes have been added to the familiar fairy-tale characters.

In Moscow, in honor of the launch of the second season of the series, the "Claustrophobia" quest network, together with the Okko online cinema, created a special interactive project - a quest with actors based on the series "Magic Precinct". Work on the quest began in mid-2024 by the former owners of the "Claustrophobia" company and was completed by the new owners of the network. At the time of the release of the first episode of the new season, the quest was still in a closed state.^[6]

The series received mostly positive ratings from Russian film critics.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

Vadim Bogdanov (InterMedia): "The series is positioned as a fairy tale for adults, which noticeably distinguishes 'Magic Precinct' from the endless stream of family and children's films on the same topic. Here there is violence, naked female bodies, jokes on the verge, and a lot of obscenity (unfortunately, beeped out at the premiere). Specifically, Ilya Sobolev is responsible for the obscenity in the role of the foul-mouthed gnome, and he swears, of course, enchantingly — with his signature delivery, even a random set of adjectives makes you laugh out loud."^[12]

Leonid Kiskarkin (Vokrug TV): "Stepan Gordeev's series 'Magic Precinct' reminds one of 'Night Watch', 'Sergiy Against Evil Spirits', and the Soviet hit 'Charodei' simultaneously. On the one hand, we have an established organization that, in addition to directly controlling evil spirits, engages in internal intrigues and exists due to a complex system of checks and balances. On the other hand, at the center of the story is an imperfect hero suffering from a craving for alcohol and socialization problems."^[13]

Vladimir Rostovsky (Film.ru): "The derivative nature of the series actually benefits it: some clichés are played out jokingly, while others exist as a given but do not blur the overall picture. An important point is that the Moscow in 'Precinct' is fake. The creators emphasize that the reality of the series is alternative, although similar to ours: certain events fall out, and some historical figures have different names and destinies. This approach allows one to abstract from modernity even more and not be tied to the agenda, but at the same time maintain relevance."^[14]

Summing up the results of the year, the service Okko named the series the most watched on the service in 2023.^[15]

• Series page on the online cinema Okko