The Strugatsky brothers’ Soviet sci-fi classic ‘Hard to Be a God’ took aim at dictatorship. Russia’s new state-backed TV adaptation strips away the politics.

The streaming platform Wink is releasing a series called “Hard to Be a God,” based on the novel by the Strugatsky brothers. The creators have noticeably changed the book’s plot: now we follow Earth’s envoy, Don Rumata, from his very first days working in Arkanar. There are more characters and more a