The Executioner (Palach) is a 2015 (filmed 2014) Russian detective TV series. In 1965 a seventeen years old boy Petya Yakovlev is gunned down in the Moscow outskirts. The investigation, hold by Militsiya Maj. Ivan Petrovich Tcherkasov (Andrey Smolyakov), finds that the boy studied the past of his aunt Raisa Ivanonva Yakovleva who is known as a veteran of Soviet partisans during the WW2. The truth is that during the war a Red Army nurse Antonina Malyshkina (Viktoriya Tolstoganova) becomes a Nazi collaborator and carried out mass executions of Soviet POWs and civilians. After the war she manages to escapes and lives under the name of Raisa Yakovleva. When Malyshkina-Yakovleva feels threatened with exposure, she begins to kill.
The plot is based on the real case of Antonina Makarova.
Palach is the second installment in the TV series about detective Ivan Tcherkasov.
The following weapons were used in the television series The Executioner (Palach):
A TT-33 is briefly seen in the gun locker in the class of basic military training. In the final of the series, a TT is used for the execution of Antonina Malyshkina.
A Makarov PM, stolen from the class of basic military training, is a plot item. The screen gun is a gas-firing version of PM, an IZh-79-8. The pistol is used by Antonina Malyshkina alias Raisa Yakovleva (Viktoriya Tolstoganova) to kill Petya Yakovlev. A service PM pistol of Militsiya Maj. Stepan Zinchuk (Vasily Slusarenko) turns out to be the same prop.
In wartime scenes Antonina Malyshkina (Viktoriya Tolstoganova) uses a Luger P08 for killing those of her victims who were only wounded by the machine gun. The screen gun partially lacks the typical Luger jointed arm. Such feature can be seen on some blank-firing versions of P08.
In wartime scenes a German Lieutenant (Andreas Helgi Schmid) carries a Walther P38. Antonina Malyshkina (Viktoriya Tolstoganova) uses the Lieutenant's pistol to kill her first victim; later her P08 switches to a P38 due to a continuity error. A P38 is also seen in hands of Raisa Safonova (Yuliya Peresild).
Malyshkina-Yakovleva (Viktoriya Tolstoganova) uses a Walther PP, an award gun of her husband Sergey Borisovich Yakovlev, to commit several murders. The screen gun turns out to be a gas-firing Enser-Sportwaffen Walther Super PP (don't mix it with Walther PP Super, a live gun chambered in 9x18mm Ultra).
In wartime scenes Capt. Sergey Yakovlev (Anatoliy Zhuravlyov) and several Soviet soldiers are armed with PPSh-41 submachine guns. In the scene, set in 1965, two PPSh-41s are seen in the gun locker in the class of basic military training.
On the wartime photo of Grigoriy Dybenko, he carries a long gun that seems to be a hunting rifle rather than a single barreled shotgun due to the hooded front sight.
A Single Barreled Shotgun is briefly seen in the gun locker in the class of basic military training (a small caliber rifle would be a more correct weapon for such case).
For the using of the Maxim M1910/30 machine gun for mass executions, Antonina Malyshkina (Viktoriya Tolstoganova) gets the nickname "Ton'ka-Pulemyotchitsa" ("Ton'ka the Machine Gunner"; Ton'ka is a diminutive for Antonina, and the nickname is a reference to Anka the Machine Gunner, a character from cult Soviet film Chapaev).
A Pz.IV/Tiger-style tank, not fitting for 1941, is seen in one scene. This is a mockup, based on T-44 or T-54 chassis. Such vehicles are widely seen in Russian war films.
