Have you watched "Servant of the People?"

Season 1 is on Netflix. Make it a priority.

The Ukrainian television show, “Servant of the People” follows the fictional Ukrainian president, Vasyl Petrovych Goloborodko, played by current-day, real-life Ukrainian president, Vlodomyr Zelenskyy.

In the show, Goloborodko is an everyday history teacher until a secretly-videotaped rant he delivers about hopelessness in Ukraine goes viral. The show ran from 2015-2019, when real-life Petro Poroshenko lead the actual country. (Poroshenko was interviewed on CNN this weekend, and when he was asked about his fierce election rivalry with Zelenskyy, said the unity of his country is “bullet-proof.”)

Goloborodko is charming and affable and generous and well-read and divorced with a son and his parents (with whom he’d been living when he won the election) and family are delighted to see all the goodies that come their way — a plasma television, kitchen implements they’d once only dreamed of, free fancy clothes — based on their loved one’s ascension into the presidency. The utter decency of the main character reminds me — God forgive me — of the Clampetts in “Beverly Hillbillies,” who for all their lack of sophistication were still frequently the wisest people in town.

Here’s what you can learn from the show: God help us if the rest of the world judges the U.S. zeitgeist based on any one television show (such as, say, anything involving Tucker Carlson, that traitorous gasbag), but if “Servant” is any indication, Ukrainian humor is just the right amount of dark and absurdist.

The show also reaffirms that people in other countries know far more about our culture than we do about theirs. Many of the jokes revolve around corruption in the Ukrainian culture (debts are magically disappeared, as are lines at the bank) but there is one incredible scene as Goloborodko/Zelenskyy prepares for his inauguration in the first season, in which American Pres. Abraham Lincoln visits the new president and gives him a cosmic (and moving) pep talk. Al Capone shows up, as does Louis XVI and Ivan (the Terrible), among others.

The show is funny and smart and fast and, as others have said, it’s a love letter to Ukraine’s potential, though it is beyond sobering to think that all the street scenes from the show now look very, very different, since the despot Putin — who is the target of plenty of “Servant” jokes — has done his damage. It is still very much worth your time.