'Ponies': How realistic is Moscow & USSR in the new ‘Peacock’ spy series? 

Soviet Moscow. 1977. Two employees of the United States embassy (who also happen to be CIA agents) die under mysterious circumstances. Their widows want to find out what happened and volunteer to work for the agency.

It's the height of the Cold War, but the women, without any training, start dangerous spy missions, risking their lives and the lives of others everyday. One of them even pretends to be Russian and tries to seduce a KGB agent to extract secrets.

This is the premise of the new ‘Peacock’ series ‘Ponies’. PONI – ‘Person of No Interest’ – refers to people deemed of no interest to intelligence agencies. That's exactly what these two American women in 1970s Soviet Moscow are.

Broken Russian with a strong accent

"Tvoyu mat! Dai mne moii yaytsa!" (“Твою мать, дай мне мои яйца!” – “Damn it! Give me my eggs!”), says Emilia Clarke's character in broken Russian with a strong accent, arguing with a saleswoman at a market, who, incidentally, also replies with a heavy accent.

In general, all the “Russians” in the series speak a lot of Russian, but most with a very strong non-Russian accent. So, the fact that Clarke's character tries to pass herself off as a Belarusian looks, at the very least, amateurish and tacky.

Details & ambiance

The series avoids the Faux Cyrillic that plagues many American productions and all Russian names and signs are, for the most part, written correctly. Even the Soviet slogans and posters that appear in passing are appropriate.

Although, the term ‘Soviet pub’ seems like an oxymoron. But, perhaps, embassy staff really did know of such a secret spot in the Soviet capital.

However, the decor of Soviet apartments only vaguely resembles reality. Soviet dachas, bars, restaurants and the characters' outfits are also interpreted quite liberally. Everything is in the style of the late 1970s, but it all seems too colorful and far from Soviet reality.

Soviet ‘Moscow’

The opening footage in the series looks promising, suggesting the Soviet reality has been recreated meticulously and accurately. But then, you see… Hungary. The series was filmed in Budapest, so ‘Soviet Moscow’ bears a strong resemblance to Budapest itself.

Apart from a couple of real location shots, like the Red Square (without the main characters, by the way), everything else looks absolutely nothing like Moscow.

An absolute cringe moment is when the iconic St. Basil's Cathedral suddenly appears in the middle of a street or the red stars of the Moscow Kremlin CGIed into the background.

They also didn't bother to recreate famous Moscow locations. For example, the iconic ‘Praga’ restaurant looks like this in the series:

In reality, this is what it looks like:

And ‘GUM’, the legendary department store on the Red Square, looks like this and is somehow located on a certain Makarov Street:

Let us remind you that ‘GUM’ actually looks like this:

The famous ‘Sanduny Bathhouse’ was filmed in Budapest's ‘Széchenyi Baths’ (a far too recognizable location), which, again is nothing like the legendary banya in Russia’s capital.

To see what the real ‘Sanduny’ looks like, check out our photo report.

Bad Russians & other cliches

The series is also full of anti-Soviet passages and stereotypes. Moscow is explicitly and repeatedly called “the most terrible and horrible place”. And, in the American embassy, the Soviets supposedly turn off the heating in winter, leaving the poor U.S. diplomats to freeze.

The KGB is portrayed as evil incarnate, eavesdropping on absolutely everyone. Its agents are portrayed as horrible “bad” Russians who kill indiscriminately (the CIA agents, of course, are very nice, innocent guys here).

‘Ponies’ is yet another American spy series about Russia and the USSR that’s chockablock full of blunders and absurdities. While the overall plot is quite engaging, we, once again, see the stereotypical images of “bad” Russians that were characteristic of spy films from the Cold War era. And it's surprising to see this again in 2026. Then again, maybe not!