New hit Ukrainian TV show for teenagers addresses taboo subjects

It’s not every day that a Ukrainian TV series motivates teenagers to talk to adults about their problems and fears.

But the recently-created “Pershi Lastivky,” (“Early Swallows,” a reference to the birds considered the first signs of spring) has taken Ukraine by storm, influencing thousands of schoolchildren across the country to call helplines and open up about bullying and harassment.

It follows in the footsteps of American teenage drama “13 Reasons Why,” which started a conversation about teenage suicide and sexual assault in 2017.

“Pershi Lastivky” is an eight-part series filmed by the Ukrainian Starlight Production company and screened on the Novyi TV channel in late November 2019.

The plot focuses on several Ukrainian school children suffering from a lack of parental care and support and the affects of their classmate’s suicide on them. The teenagers’ struggles like bullying, harassment, and intolerance unfold on screen.

The series hit close to home. Bullying and harassment at schools is an acute problem for Ukraine. In 2017, about 109,000 children or their parents approached psychologists after experiencing bullying, the Hromadske news site reported.

UNICEF’s latest survey, conducted in June 2019, found that about 30 percent of Ukrainians from 13 to 24 years old had been victims of online bullying.

And even though a fine for bullying and harassment was finally introduced in 2019, the problem is far from being solved.

Videos showing Ukrainian children bullying their classmates or even beating them up often pop up online and go viral. One such incident occurred in Kyiv in spring 2019. The video, in which several teenagers beat a girl who begs them on her knees to stop, sparked outrage.

However, according to Ukrainian media, the incident was not reported to the police.

“Pershi Lastivky” aimed to raise awareness of bullying and urge Ukrainian teenagers to speak up.

The end of each episode features the phone number of the national helpline for children. Within a month after the show’s first episode aired, the helpline received over 6,000 appeals. Before the show, the line received this many calls in six months, Hromadske reported.

La Strada, a Ukrainian non-governmental human rights organization that runs the helpline, assisted in creating the series. The organization provided the film crew with the real but anonymous stories of Ukrainian teenagers who sought their help.

“We pay a lot of attention to this TV project as we hope that, this way, more and more teenagers will not be silent when they are hurt and will talk about their fears,” La Strada wrote on Facebook. “In our opinion, Ukrainian TV channels are starting a new stage of their development by basing the plot (of their show) on (real) stories of violence and bullying.”

In an interview with the UNIAN news site, Yevhen Tunik, the screenwriter and producer or “Pershi Lastivky,” said that the stories provided by La Strada have influenced the development of the script very strongly.

According to Tunik, it was important for him to make the series as realistic as possible.

For that reason, he tried to study the behavior of teenagers and also consulted with lawyers and psychologists to realistically depict the problems of the youth, Tunik said.

It was also important for him to recreate the modern slang that teenagers use.

“Perhaps this series will show that (behaving with) humanity at school among teachers and students is a guarantee that children will not throw themselves out the window,” Tunik said in an interview.

Additionally, the TV series is a definite must-watch for parents who want to understand their children better.

“Hey, parents, open your eyes, or should we all die to be noticed?” says one of the main characters in the series.