Restaurant

Genre:  Comedy/Sitcom

Episodes:  24 episodes in a season

Marina's close friends are terrified when they learn that this 35-year-old impractical and worn-out music teacher seriously intends to open a restaurant.  Marina has no assets except her grandmother's recipe book, and she's already taken out a loan which she has to pay back soon.  Marina uses this money to rent run-down premises in an old building.  She has no license, no chef, and no kitchen equipment.  She has nothing, in fact!  Nevertheless, she advertises and sets the date of the opening of the restaurant in the newspapers.

Her best friend Verunchik (who weighs 120 kilos) and her childhood friend, Valik (a tired father of five) both believe that Marina has gone insane.  It is simply impossible to open a restaurant under such circumstances.  But Marina seems to have little choice because she has already spent her loan.  So her friends have no option but to help her.

The three characters start this absolutely hopeless venture and in the process have to overcome their fears, doubts, and lack of confidence.

Thanks to an enormous effort, they manage to get the restaurant ready for the opening.  But this is just a hollow victory.  The crowds ignore their place and rush to the venue next door, a trendy, rival restaurant.  Marina and her friends learn that their competitors are a cynical businessman, Sergei, his assistant, Alina, a cold sex bomb, and an art director called Artur who is an eccentric scandal monger.  At first, they are amused by Marina’s small restaurant, but then they become plain angry and declare outright war.    

The only weapon our characters have in this unequal fight is their dream of creating something more than just a place to eat out.  Their aim is to make their restaurant a convivial and cozy place for large family events where patrons will feel at home.

This unreal dream is the only thing that keeps them going, while their actual plans keep on falling through.

Their visitors are rude hooligans.  Verunchik, who has finally received her chef's certificate, suddenly disappears under the pretext of strange allergies, and so the untrained Valik has to take her place in the kitchen.  And when the restaurant finally gets a long-awaited corporate client, it turns out to be a funeral agency.  So instead of fun family holidays they have to cater for wakes, while the restaurant next door gets weddings.  Even the couple that Marina matches together goes to the rival restaurant to celebrate their marriage.  Everything just keeps going wrong.

The relationships between our characters develop quite unexpectedly.  Their career twists coincide with the wreckage of their private lives.  Marina leaves her husband; Valik leaves his wife; while Verunchik, Sergei, and Artur are single and aren’t even thinking about a family life.  At the beginning of the show, none of them can imagine that they will end up finding their loves.