In the first days of February 1959, nine mountaineers died on the northern slopes of the Urals in today’s Russia under circumstances that are still unclear. What happened to the experienced mountaineers, students of the technological faculty in nearby Yekaterinburg, led by Igor Dyatlov, has not been clarified with certainty to this day, and this event inspired the creator of this eight-part mystery series, Ilya Kulikov. And Kulikov conceived the series in an interesting way, and in half of the episodes we follow the adventures of Dyatlov and his team, and in the second half we follow the investigation led by the KGB officer Oleg (Pyotr Fyodorov).
And of course, a lot of artistic freedom was taken and a lot of it was fictionalized with added supernatural elements, but also flashbacks to the final days of World War II, since the tortured KGB officer Oleg is a war veteran. Pathologist Katja, who does not even know that her late husband was Oleg’s comrade-in-arms, will be his greatest help in the investigation. And it is obvious that “Pervat Dyatlova” or “Dead Mountain” in English is a quality production on which no expense was spared and the historical environment is extremely well presented. Somewhat surprisingly, the episodes filmed in black and white, in which we follow Dyatlov, his team and what happened to them, were much more interesting and better for me than the somewhat dry episodes in which we follow the investigation.