No, really - I was lucky enough to travel to Russia a lot in 2003/2004 - and I loved every minute of it. I made some good friends there - who I’ll never forget, and saw some things I thought I would never see - so I was really excited when I heard that More4 were running a series of programmes about Russia this week.

Last night was the first of the week with two documentaries - one made by Marcel Theroux (brother of Louis) who explored Russia and charted some of the key problems that have faced the great nation since the fall of communism. The average male life expectancy has fallen by 7 years, and in the first half of 2005 the population of Russia fell by half a million. Its a shock that Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world, yet a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. Theroux managed to capture the feel of Russia well, particularly the scenes where his filming in Krasnodar was disrupted by a Cossack Army Colonel - keen to show off his nationalist pride to the western cameras. It was sad to see some of the issues in Russia laid bare, but an excellent documentary.

The second of the programmes was more specific - focusing on the Moscow Theater siege which ended so tragically in October 2002. Over 40 Chechen terrorists took control of a Moscow theater threatening to blow the building up with many innocents inside. 19 of the terrorists were women - each equipped with a bomb strapped to their bodies, with which they threatened to avenge the deaths of their husbands and children in Chechnya. As the terrorists remanded the withdrawl of Russian forces from the remote state, the Russian army plotted an audacious (and yet flawed entry). After 57 hours, they started to pump an anasthetic gas into the building - followed by an armed raid. Nearly all of the terrorists were rendered useless by the gas, and some were shot by the alpha-force troops, but a key mistake in planning meant that there were not enough medics available to administer the antidote to the gas - 129 people died. The Chechyen widows got the vengeance they needed - even in death themselves.

Both of these documentaries were excellent - and theres four more this week worth watching:

• Tuesday 21st - How Putin came to power / Dispatches from Beslan
• Wednesday 22nd - Once upon a time in Siberia / Mamuchka