Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump Illustration by João Fazenda

In the first episode of “Servant of the People,” Ukraine’s smash-hit political satire, a schoolteacher in Kiev rushes around his crowded, messy apartment, desperate to make it to work on time, juggling irons and coffeepots. He’s still on the toilet, pants down, when there’s a loud banging at the door. It’s the Prime Minister, with a surprising greeting: “Good morning, Mr. President.” Our hero looks stunned: it’s his chance to try to fix his broken country.

“Servant of the People,” which premièred in 2015, has run for three seasons, plus a movie. At once daffy, scathing, and inspirational, the series is a smart genre-bender, mixing Ryan Murphy wackiness with Sorkinian uplift (minus the hubris), and Norman Lear sitcom beats with “Scandal”-esque twists. Its biggest impact, however, has been political: in a turn that, a few years back, would have seemed inconceivable, the show’s star, Volodymyr Zelensky, leaped from the fictional Presidency into the real one. In 2018, employees of his production company, Kvartal 95, formed a political party—also called Servant of the People. A year later, he was elected President in a landslide, promising, in effect, to drain the Ukrainian swamp.

At that point, Zelensky received a congratulatory phone call from the other TV star who had been elected President: Donald Trump, formerly of “The Apprentice.” Their relationship has since become more complicated. At a joint press conference last week, after Nancy Pelosi launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump, Zelensky joked, about meeting Trump for the first time, that “it’s better to be on TV than by phone.” His deadpan cool, with wry comebacks, stood in contrast with Trump’s gloomy solipsistic bluster. Then, as Trump urged Zelensky to “get together” with Vladimir Putin, the mood went sour, as Twitter began to post screen grabs of Zelensky’s chagrined expression, suggesting that the scene be scored to the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme.

The premise of “Servant of the People” is simple and funny: one day, Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko, a high-school history teacher, begins ranting about his country’s broken elections, in which citizens must vote for “the lesser of two assholes.” A student records the tirade, the clip goes viral, and fans crowdfund his campaign. When he wins, he’s utterly unprepared, as are the local oligarchs, who try and fail to bribe him. The Prime Minister oversees his makeover, complete with a “Queer Eye”-ish squad of beauty coaches.

In the third episode, the new President freaks out when he realizes that the inauguration speech prepared by his handlers rips off the Gettysburg Address—something the Prime Minister insists is fine, since Ukrainians won’t notice and Americans might be flattered. In a surreal twist, the ghost of Abraham Lincoln shows up. He urges Holoborodko to free Ukrainians from economic slavery and to “be yourself, Mr. President,” so our hero—in a classic TV move—tosses the speech, explaining to voters that he’ll follow a new model: “One should act in a way that doesn’t evoke shame when looking into children’s eyes. Or their parents’. Or yours.”

It’s an ethic that’s the exact inverse of Trump’s embrace of shamelessness. But there are other eerie echoes of the moment, suggesting the fraught bridges between the two countries. In the Season 1 finale (spoilers!), Holoborodko goes on a talk show with the Prime Minister, participating in a debate on how to end corruption. Midway through, he reveals a black ledger listing participants in dirty Ukrainian deals—a ledger not unlike the one that landed Paul Manafort in prison. In a moment as theatrical as any boardroom ceremony in “The Apprentice,” he has the studio turn off the lights for the big reveal: in the darkness, the Prime Minister’s face and hands light up in bioluminescent green, stained from where he touched the dirty money.

After that season, the show evolved into more of an ensemble workplace sitcom—“Parks and Recreation,” Kiev style, with a cabinet of outsiders finding clever ways to procure I.M.F. funding while passing reforms, against the will of scheming oligarchs. Despite having emerged from a kleptocracy, the show—which was originally conceived, in the early two-thousands, as a reality show, with ordinary people running for office—is a strikingly more idealistic, less nihilistic project than many American series of the same period, such as “House of Cards” and “Veep.” Meanwhile, Zelensky himself has become an icon, playing the kind of guy who won’t let even his own family get away with graft. In some ways, Zelensky and Trump are similar. They’re both comedians, although Trump is more a stadium insult comic, whereas Zelensky has starred in rom-coms. Like Trump, Zelensky has appointed members of his company to official roles, and, like Trump, Zelensky has circumvented the mainstream press, communicating through Instagram, via slick self-produced videos—in which he is, on occasion, in costume as President Holoborodko or “interviewed” by the actor who played the Prime Minister.

In another way, however, their brands are opposites. On “The Apprentice,” the bankrupt Trump was portrayed as a savvy, cynical super-boss, the object of worship to contestants. The entire point of “Servant of the People” is that Holoborodko is a humble man who, right away, admits to not understanding the policies that he needs to enact. He’s worthy of praise precisely because he doesn’t think he’s all that—and when he tells the truth, as he explains to his students, it’s because the truth is objective, available to all. He’s bookish, too; he falls asleep studying Plutarch’s “Lives” and has restless dreams in which philosophers bicker about socialism and autocracy. If he resembles anyone on the American scene, it’s Elizabeth Warren, another former teacher running on a platform of fighting corruption, opposed by America’s version of oligarchs.

Whether Zelensky is for real or not isn’t something that can be determined by someone from outside the culture. But the actor turned President clearly intended, even before he ran, for his show to do more than entertain. In 2017, when the series was picked up by Netflix, he told Cinema Escapist that it was meant to speak to a post-Soviet generation, eager for “positive changes.” Those offended by political satire, he said, “must have an Iron Curtain in their brains higher than the one in the Soviet Union!” (He added that every country has its own tradition of rude jokes: “For example, in the U.S., Trump is President: how can you not talk about it?”) Notably, he kept a campaign promise that seems especially relevant: two days before his press conference with Trump, Zelensky signed a new law that, for the first time, created a way to impeach the Ukrainian President—himself included—for “high treason or other felonies.” Afterward, he posted a video on Instagram, in which he urged citizens to pay their taxes and to “live in accordance with the law.” There are all kinds of influencers. ♦