Channing Tatum swaps ‘Russian bad guys’ for Americans in Comrade Detective

Channing Tatum has spoken about his new TV show that swaps Hollywood’s stereotypical Russian bad guys for Americans enemies in a communist state.

Comrade Detective is presented as a piece of 1980s Romanian propaganda where police hunt crooks in Ronald Reagan masks.

Tatum, who serves as both voiceover artist and an executive producer in the Amazon Prime comedy, said the idea made him think about the Hollywood films of his childhood.

Speaking at the show’s Los Angeles premiere, Tatum, 37, said: “As a kid growing up in the South I never thought (it but) of course they were making TV shows and movies behind the Iron Curtain but it must have been Americans as the bad guys.

“Because in the 80s and the 90s every single movie, whether it be Lethal Weapon or Die Hard, every one of them had a Russian bad guy.”

Gordon-Levitt said the series, released on Friday, uses humour to examine how films and TV are used to shape national identities.

“If you watch action movies or action shows like this during the Cold War, certainly there’s a heavy bent against Eastern European dudes.”