Season two takes ‘Russian Doll’ to new, unexpected heights

If 2019’s first season of the Natasha Lyonne-starring existential comic drama Russian Doll was a hip, grouchy older millennial take on the ‘80s classic Groundhog Day then its follow-up is more of a sombre, pathos-inducing but still darkly funny takeoff of another ‘80s favourite, Back to the Future. This time round, Lyonne’s New York computer programming, chain-smoking, self-absorbed Nadia Vulvokov is facing the inevitable existential angst brought on by the arrival of her 40th birthday.

When she takes a subway train and realises that it has the ability to spit her out back in time to 1982, the year of her birth, and into the chaotic life of her wayward, shamelessly hustling mother Lenora (Chloë Sevigny) Nadia hatches a plan to use her newfound time-travelling device to mess with the events of the past in the hopes of giving herself a more financially and emotionally stable present.

Without spoiling the twisty plot and its surprises, it’s safe to say that the new season takes the show — under the creative guidance of Lyonne for the first time — to new, unexpected heights. Using her Jewish-Hungarian history as inspiration, Lyonne has turned what was a slick, hipster winking comedy with a cool soundtrack into a wide-ranging examination of generational trauma, addiction and alienation that hits home with more emotional depth and truth than its previous season would have led you to expect.

Nadia’s interventions take her down a fraught, often tragic maze that will see her confront her family’s terrible World War 2 past and make her realise that personal enrichment sometimes comes at emotional cost.

Lyonne keeps everything together thanks to her talent for evoking the gritty difficulties of addiction — which she overcame in 2006 — and delivering some drily smart quips in her gruff chain-smoking growl.

Though it may use a beloved 1980s movie touchstone as the inspiration for its premise; in execution and thematic considerations this season of Russian Doll is closer in spirit to the paranoid explorations of classic 1970s cinema.

Not quite as easy to ingest in one sitting as its first outing but more profound and rewarding in its ambitious scope it’s a welcome showcase for Lyonne’s talents as a performer, and a superior example of how to transform a potentially smart one-trick pony premise into something with proper dramatic and philosophically intriguing new legs. Where it goes next will be fascinating to see.

• 'Russian Doll' Season 2 is on Netflix.