The Self-Serving Seduction of 'Vladimir'

Like “Lolita,” the new campus comedy “Vladimir” takes its title from the object of its protagonist’s delusional obsession. The series’ Vladimir, played by Leo Woodall, is a rising literary star and a young father who’s just arrived at a sleepy upstate college, where he and his wife are set to teach. More relevant to his new colleague, M (Rachel Weisz), a creative-writing professor, he is also fantastically hard-bodied, as dedicated to his gains at the gym as he is to the life of the mind. M’s infatuation with Vladimir might be interpreted as an idle distraction from the sex scandal engulfing her husband, John (John Slattery), if not for a flash-forward in the show’s opening minutes. There she is with an unconscious man tied to a chair in her cabin, part-Humbert Humbert, part-Annie Wilkes.