The Polish ‘Friends’ & the Fall of Communism: An Introduction to ‘Alternatywy 4’

alternatywy4-1-f-3588-5-1500x.jpg, default, ‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl, The Polish ‘Friends’ & the Fall of Communism: An Introduction to ‘Alternatywy 4’

#film

A Polish sitcom similar to ‘Friends’?! You read correctly – except this sitcom represents the fall of Communism.

Cities & shows

Sitcoms are commonly associated with the big cities they are set in. With Friends, which of course needs no introduction, you find a group of tight-knit twenty-somethings living in New York City apartments. In Alternatywy 4, another comedy show about a group of people who also lived in apartments, you find the city of Warsaw. Their lives are not as lavish as their American counterparts’, but, as the Friends theme goes, they too were there for each other, coming together through a movement called Solidarność.

Living situation

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

alternatywy4-1-f-3588-19-1500x.jpg

In Friends, the six main characters (Rachel, Ross, Chandler, Monica, Joey, Phoebe) manage their plots in cushy New York City apartments at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s. Rachel/Monica and Chandler/Joey are roommates living in separate apartments in the same building, while Ross and Phoebe live by themselves. Monica’s apartment was especially big, including a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a balcony. The series explains that Monica inherited her rent-controlled apartment from her grandmother, although some fans continue to point out how the living arrangements are unrealistic and would be completely unaffordable for the characters.

The block where 'Alternatywy 4' was filmed, seen from Cynamonowa Street, photo: Adrian Grycuk / Wikimedia

In Alternatywy 4, which premiered on Polish television in 1986 (after passing the Soviet censors’ high bar), all of the main characters live in a large, gray, Soviet apartment block in Warsaw. Their living situation, unlike the characters in Friends, is entirely in the hands of the president of the housing cooperative. He determines which of the applicants get to live in the apartment block on 4 Alternatywy Street, and the applicants wait an absurdly long time for the president’s decision. Because it takes so long, a television producer tasked with filming the soon-to-be opening chooses who gets to live in the apartment block, making the process much shorter by choosing the thirty applicants whose names he likes the sound of.

The tenants in Alternatywy 4 move into uncertainty. Zenobiusz Furman’s apartment is a knockout: when he attempts to enter it, the door becomes unhinged, falling forward, nearly collapsing on him. The tenants also struggle to bring in their belongings, as they can only move them through the building’s narrow front doors, one of which doesn’t open. Another tenant, a crane operator, helps them by lifting their belongings onto the apartment balconies.

Hanging out

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

alternatywy4-1-f-3588-14-1500x.jpg

In Friends, one of their most popular hangout destinations is Central Perk, a coffeehouse. In Alternatywy 4, the tenants end up forcibly hanging out together in the building's laundry room. The Landlord, Stanisław Anioł, uses them to create a good image for himself, and he forms a choir of the tenants to showcase their collective voice. This backfires on him, though, when they choose to sing a patriotic Polish song, Witaj Majowa Jutrzenko. In response, he changes the choir to a folk dancing group.

Characters

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

alternatywy4-lutkiewicz_kobuszewski_pokora_1-f-3588-15-1500x.jpg

Rachel from Friends and Ewa Majewska from Alternatywy 4 both fall in love with nerds. Rachel dates Ross, a paleontologist, while Ewa dates Krzysztof Manc, an inventor. Manc creates a robot that can replace him in the long lines at the empty butcher shop. But his own robot is butchered, losing its head when it is pushed aside by the crowd rushing inside the barren butcher shop that just received a shipment of ham.

Rachel and Ewa also both work tough jobs. Rachel works as a waitress at Central Perk before she becomes a fashion assistant and the women’s wear coordinator at Ralph Lauren. Ewa, living with her family to make money for her own apartment, turns to striptease. Manc, wanting to help Ewa, promises to create a stripper robot which will replace Ewa but still make her money.

Thumbnail — ‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Just like Chandler and Joey in Friends, Zygmunt Kotek and Zdzisław Kołek from Alternatywy 4 are quarreling roommates. Kotek and Kołek don’t like each other but are accidentally assigned to live in the same apartment. They work to build a cement wall separating them in their own apartment. Despite their differences, they work together to be able to live apart. After finding out about a walled-off apartment unit in the building, they hammer away to gain access to it, and Kołek moves into the new apartment unit.

Obsessions also take center stage in both shows. Monica from Friends needs a spotless apartment, while Elżbieta Kolińska-Kubiak, an operetta singer in Alternatywy 4, can only sing in pristine conditions. Kolińska thinks highly of herself, considering herself a great talent and always practicing, but the building's never-ending repairs constantly interrupt her. She physically and verbally berates her husband for not stopping the interruptions. Her obsession with practice makes her marriage out of tune, and her husband has an affair with another tenant, a married woman who is… an amateur singer.

Finally, Zenobiusz Furman in Alternatywy 4 and Friends’ Phoebe both have false identities. In Friends, Phoebe impersonates the fictional Regina Phalange while Furman impersonates a hunter. Furman, a self-proclaimed hunter, tries impressing his crush Ewa Majewska by shooting flying ducks. He misses, blaming his inaccuracy on the wind, and blows his shot with Ewa, as she points out that the ducks he tried shooting were actually pigeons.

Additional characters

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

alternatywy4-mieczyslaw_voit_1-f-3588-42-1500x.jpg

Alternatywy 4 has a bigger cast of main characters than Friends. Two of them stand out: Józef Balcerek and Stanisław Anioł. Anioł threatens Balcerek with jail time when he discovers that Balcerek is in possession of a month's supply of meat, a rarity in Poland under the communist regime and an unthinkable scenario in Friends. But the cocky landlord is surprised when Balcerek snaps at him, chasing him out of his apartment with his belt and proving the landlord to be a coward.

‘Friends’ & Solidarność

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Alternatywy 4’, directed by Stanisław Bareja, 1983, photo: National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

alternatywy4-1-f-3588-11-1500x.jpg

Both Friends and Alternatywy 4 are shows about groups of people who come together in big cities. In Friends, the characters bond over their similarities. Some of them previously knew each other, but their friendships strengthen as they mature together. In Alternatywy 4, the tenants are strangers of a wide variety of ages. They don’t come together from friendship or shared experience: they come together through solidarność, or solidarity, with one another, as the same era the real-world Solidarność movement gathers membership and strength to topple Communist rule. In the show, the different tenants come together to prevail over their tyrant landlord.

Before a delegation of the world's mayors come to visit, Anioł tries to liven up the gray apartment building. His changes include taking the tenants’ belongings, such as Kolińska’s piano, to turn the laundry room into a communal tenants’ club. The tenants, unlike the furniture, can't be moved to fit Anioł’s plans. When the mayors come to visit – a moment Anioł hopes will show the success of his apartment block – the tenants act crazy. For instance, Manc berates his “wife” (his robot in women’s clothes), and she jumps off their balcony. His robot wife gets up from her fall, clutching her detached head. The horrified mayors, thinking that his robot is a real woman, run away. After these displays, the world's mayors decide to fund the apartment block, and Anioł is replaced as landlord.

In this episode, the last in the series, Manc’s robot of the future represents the movement of Poland away from Soviet communism. Poland and the worlds’ leaders begin to embrace each other. Friends limits its progress to a few friends, but Alternatywy 4 represents how a country bowed by Communist isolation resists Communism and moves into the promise of globalism. Additionally, while Alternatywy 4 presents a more equitable politics for Poland, the show also includes racial stereotyping in certain episodes.

Language English