I was wrong.

The current situation
in Ukraine has been addressed in CBS political dramas “Homeland,” “Madam
Secretary” and the ninth episode of the criminal drama “Elementary.” But in all
of them Ukraine is stereotyped as a corrupt, incompetent state that tries to
take advantage of its “victim status” in the conflict with Russia.

That’s pretty
disturbing.

“Elementary”
is a detective drama, a modern reboot of the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
stories about the genius detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Doctor
John Watson – in this version a character named Joan, played by Lucy Liu. The action
takes place in New York, where Holmes and Watson help city police solve crimes.

In the ninth
episode of the fourth season, two Ukrainian soldiers kill Russian oligarch Maxim
Zolotov near the entrance to a strip club in Brooklyn.

After that,
the assassins die in a car crash. When Holmes and Watson start their
investigation, they discover that the U.S State Department is also involved in
the case.

Russian
oligarch Zolotov is portrayed as a peacemaker, representing the interests of
the “people of the Donbas” in negotiations with the show’s fictional U.S. Secretary
of State Lee Jonson.

“He was
trying to resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine peacefully. The Ukrainians
have been getting continuous financial and military help since the start of the
conflict. So they’ll do anything to maintain their victim status,” said Jonson says
to Holmes.

“But it’s not
smart to hire killers of the same nationality,” says Holmes.

“Yes. But we’re
talking about Ukrainians, as if they were competent. And that’s questionable,”
says Jonson.

Throughout the
episode Holmes tried to work out who stands to benefit from the Ukrainian-Russian
conflict, and in the end figures out that it is a U.S. IT mogul from the
Pentilium Company, who wanted the sanctions imposed on Russia for its aggression
against Ukraine to continue so he could replace Russian rocket engines with
Pentilium motors.

As for the
main character in CBS’s political drama “Madame Secretary” – some of her
statements, like for example the demand to “give autonomy to the east of
Ukraine” in exchange for weapons and U.S defense of its eastern part, could
have been written in the Kremlin press office.

In the drama,
after the death of Russian President Ostrov, U.S.
Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord sets up negotiations between Ukrainian President Mikhail Bozek and
Russian Foreign Minister Anton Gorev in order to improve U.S relations with
Russia.

“By giving independence
to eastern Ukraine, we will turn the clock back. Ukraine will get the chance to
stop a war it can’t win. And Russia will get rid of sanctions,” says
McCord.

So why are U.S.
fictional portrayals of Ukraine still so far from reality, and seemingly biased
towards the Kremlin’s point of view?

According to Polina Tolmachyova, PR
& marketing director
at FILM.UA Group, plot lines like the ones above reflect no
more than the personal views of the creators.

“CBS is a public, not state owned
corporation. So such portrayal of Ukraine can hardly be an element of state
propaganda. It’s more like the vision of the authors. It’s not a documentary, so the creators can go into any kind of fiction. We in Ukraine don’t judge the
U.S political scene by watching ‘The House of Cards,’” said Tolmachyova.

But Maxym Lytvynov, the head of the
production company
StarLight Films, told me that TV shows not only reflect but form
the tastes and positions of their audience.

“No wonder that in the eyes of many
foreigners we (Ukraine) are still a post-Soviet country, full of corrupt
officials and bandits. Ukraine has done nothing to change that image in 24
years in the eyes of average Americans or western Europeans, said Lytvynov.

According to him, many foreign
scriptwriters stick to cliché when writing about Ukraine. The conflict between
Russia and Ukraine is as little understood as the genocides in Africa are to
Ukrainians.

“To change that attitude our government has
put more effort and money into spheres that could export a positive image of
Ukraine: tourism, sport, IT and science. Organize international forums and
festivals. And of course to start the production of high-quality TV shows and
drama series that show Ukraine to the world,” the producer
said.

“The attitude of the people of the world
towards Ukraine won’t change overnight. We all need to work hard for it,” added
Lytvynov.

So while I
won’t stop watching U.S.-made television dramas, it looks like for some time to
come I’m just going to have to grit my teeth when the plot line includes the
fictional Ukraine imagined by U.S. screenwriters.