Channing Tatum Spoofs The Cold War In Comrade Detective Trailer

Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt narrate a Romanian cop drama in the bizarre trailer for Comrade Detective. The upcoming Amazon series brings the two actors together to provide a voiceover to the fictional Romanian TV show– and yes, it is just as weird as it sounds.

Comrade Detective has quite the logline. The show purports to be the first retelling of the 1980s Cold War drama Comrade Detective, a police procedural designed to both to entertain the people and to promote Communism. The show featured Detectives Gregor Anghel and Iosef Baciu investigating the murder of their fellow officer Nikita Ionesco, and in the process, discovery the country's greatest enemy: capitalism.

As the trailer would have it, Tatum was a big fan of Comrade Detective, leading him to search desperately for a copy of the show. The trailer begins with him finally getting his copy, which is accompanied by a letter. "Dearest Channing," it begins. "What you have in your hands, what you have been searching for... we never gave up our quest for our favorite forgotten Romanian television show. Perhaps now you will find some level of peace. I know I have." 

Having finally received the project he has been looking for for so long, Tatum apparently sets out to dub it in English, lending his voice to Anghel, while Gordon-Levitt voices Baciu and Nick Offerman voices their Captain. (Romanian actors Florin Piersic Jr. and Corneliu Ulici provide the on-screen versions of the two leads.) "You don't become a good communist by going to meetings or memorizing the manifesto," Tatum as Baciu says. "You do it with your fists." 

The campy trailer features some not so special special effects, going through the bloodless death of Nikita at the hands of a masked sniper. "When a hero of the people is murdered, two comrades will do whatever is allowed to fight an evil empire," a voiceover says. "This year, the Cold War heats up." The trailer ends with Tatum, clearly in awe from what he just saw, staring at the screen with a single tear running down his cheek.

Comrade Detective has a laundry list of famous actors also set to lend their voices to the Romanian characters, including Jenny Slate, Chloe Sevigny, Jake Johnson, Jason Mantzoukas, Fred Armisen, Kim Basinger, Mahershala Ali, Tracey Letts, Bobby Cannavale, Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger, Mark Duplass, Katie Aselton Duplass, Jerrod Carmichael, Bo Burnham, and John Early. The six-episode series is set to hit Amazon on Aug. 4. In the meantime, see everything else you can expect out on the streamer next month.