Collection Nu, Pogodi!

Nu, Pogodi! is the most famous Soviet animated series ever made, and it's essentially Tom and Jerry with a cigarette. A wolf chases a hare, fails, and says the title line - "just you wait" - at the end of every episode.

The Wolf is the whole show. He smokes, he slouches, he wears a flared shirt, and he is unmistakably modelled on a specific kind of street loafer, which made him both a lovable rogue and a piece of gentle social satire. His voice, provided by Anatoli Papanov, is inseparable from the character.

There is almost no dialogue, which is why it travelled so widely across the Eastern Bloc and beyond. The humour is entirely in the timing and the escalating physical failure.

The animation quality is genuinely high for its era, with fluid movement and expressive posing that holds up against Western studio work of the time.

This collection covers the Wolf and the Hare.