Dr. Komarovskiy’s School (Школа доктора Комаровского) is a weekly Russian health/educational show. It is actually produced and filmed in Ukraine and airs in both Ukraine and Russia, but it is entirely in Russian. It has been on since 2010 and has more than 250 half-hour episodes.
The host, of course, is Dr. (Yevgeny) Komarovskiy (Евгений Комаровский in Russian; Євген Комаровський in Ukrainian), a Ukrainian pediatrician. Each episode of the show concerns one aspect of children’s health or caring for children, and the goal is to make parents more skilled and comfortable in taking care of their kids. The format is similar to a talk show, with real people coming on with their children to ask for health advice. A number of famous people have appeared on the show, including singer Vera Brezhneva and politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
The main draw of the show is Komarovskiy himself, a celebrity and quite the personality. He writes of himself on his website, “None of my ancestors ever had any relationship to medicine, and that has always surprised me—because it often seems to me that the desire to heal people is in my genetics. I’m almost certain that I have already been a doctor…” Such unscientific whims aside, Komarovskiy is also a legitimate scientist: he has written many scientific and popular-science books and articles. During his school years, he found most wards of the hospital grim and thankless; the children’s ICU was his “meaning of life,” and he worked in children’s medicine for several decades before starting his TV show. He has a clinic named after himself, which, he says, is his first priority.
Dr. Komarovskiy’s School has won a Ukrainian TV award (Телетриумф) for best children’s and best educational program, and Komarovskiy himself was named Most Handsome Man in Ukraine in 2010.
Director: Pavel Ovechkin (Павел Овечкин)
Host: Yevgeny Komarovskiy (Евгений Комаровский)
Production company: Film.ua
TV channel: Inter (Интер) in Ukraine; Mama (Мама), TV-3 (ТВ-3), and Pyatnitsa! (Пятница!) in Russia
The show’s official site, with links to legally watch and download episodes.
A recent episode:
