1670 is a Polish Mockumentary satirical comedy television series. It was released on Netflix on 13 December 2023. It follows the pursuits of Jan Paweł (pronounced John Paul, like the famous Polish Pope) Adamczewski, the head of a szlachta family in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the 17th century. Full of Polish in-jokes, it features Jan Paweł and his family as they take a documentary crew through their daily life.
1670 contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Henryk Lubopolski gets his head blown up during a hunt. Ironically, when a Bounty Hunter shows up and starts sniffing, he thinks it was an "accident" rather than a genuine mistake.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Maciej eventually warms to the various whimsical elements of the plays presented by the travelling group of actors, smiling when they rope him into their antics and goad him into doing a rimshot for a Bad "Bad Acting" death.
- All Part of the Show: When stoned Bohdan interrupts a theatre play and scares the hell out of everyone, Maciej interrupts and portrays it as part of the show, with the actors picking the cue and playing along.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: The piest investigating Henryk Lubopolski’s death after finding the guilty party which was blamed on Bohdan reveals that he was to reward the one who killed him as Henryk was a wanted man.
- Annoying Laugh: Henryk Lubopolski has a particularly piercing Noblewoman's Laugh. Keep in mind that he's a guy.
- Appeal to Tradition: Mocked relentlessly, since the series uses sarmatism
as an allegory to poke fun out of people who insist on "tradition" for their own, self-serving goals. - Aristocrats Are Evil: Henryk Lubopolski, a magnate’s son is one of the most villainous characters to the point that the one who killed him is rewarded.
- Arranged Marriage: As a Running Gag, both Jan Paweł and Andrzej are trying to find a rich suitor for their daughters - regardless of what the girls want or say. Or how blatantly bad the match is.
- Aside Glance:
- The longer he stays in Adamczycha and the more tired he's with all the antics of the locals, the more Maciej is giving those to the camera when having to face yet another form of shit given to him by someone.
- The medic does it too, before explaining to Jan Paweł that having testicles is normal and not a sign of pestilence.
- Baroque Music: As part of the joke regarding rebellious teen having a garage band, Stanisław is head-lining a music group playing "late Baroque, the newest trend" - to which Jan Paweł has a reaction as if they were playing Thrash Metal.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Invoked in various ways, particularly when Jan Paweł describes what three big features Sarmatians have after their minds and bravery.
- Blatant Lies: An entire series of those is used as a blatantly forged "Letter from the Kang" to justify increasing corvee from four days to five per week.
- The Cavalier Years: Or at least the Polish version of those. Both real and fictional characters and events from this period get mentioned and referenced.
- Character Catchphrase: Jan Paweł Adamczewski often calls himself „the most famous Jan Paweł in Polish history”.
- Comically Inept Healing: The medic combines genuine anatomical knowledge and some solid treatments with utterly ridiculous (but period-fitting) advice in tune of "smoke more, especially in winter, to not get sick, as this warms the innards".
- The Comically Serious: The medic, who wearingly has to explain various medical conditions.
- Conspiracy Theorist: The Jew believes that all Jews are in one big conspiracy, except him which means that they don't invite him into it.
- The Dung Ages: Played with. Adamczycha looks like a pig sty... because Jan Paweł is terrible at managing it or organising any kind of reconstruction from wars that ended a decade prior.
- The Dandy: Unlike every other nobleman, Henryk is following French fashion, and thus hinges on Dude Looks Like a Lady territory.
- Democracy Is Flawed: Or rather, the style of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth noble's republic is deeply flawed with its voting system, as a single vote against a motion is enough to prevent its passage, until the person voting against is convinced otherwise. The system is portrayed in all of its "glory" - with Jan Paweł intentionally preventing a reform he doesn't even understand just to spite his neighbour.
- Egocentrically Religious: The second oldest son, Jakub, who tries to get God to do what he wants.
- Egopolis: Village of Adamczycha is named from owners from Adamczewski family.
- Enlightened Self-Interest: Andrzej's MO. He pays his serfs rather than abusing corvee - because that makes them work much harder and provides him with far more grain to sell in the end. He wants to raise taxes (from 2% to 5%, but still), because that means the country in which he's living can reconstruct after decades of war and thus he keeps his privileged position along with gaining new business opportunities. He is generally nice to people (other than Jan Paweł), because this pays back in favours. He plays ball with burghers, because that makes his business even more profitable. And so on and forth. All of which still makes him generally a better person than Jan Paweł, even if his motivation is far from noble.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Almost literally, since the Jew introduces himself as "the Jew", is a barkeep and has otherwise No Name Given. He is, however, a take on an Archetypal Character from Polish literature.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Jan Paweł is utterly incapable to grasp how and why Andrzej is so successful - even when Andrzej is willing to explain. It's not helping matters that Jan Paweł is a dolt.
- Faking the Dead: Bohdan survived in this way most of the battles he participated in.
- Foil: For the first half of the show Andrzej, Jan Paweł's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, is practically a saint: he is willing to introduce and pay additional taxes for the sake of Polish economy, he runs his estate so that peasants get their share of the profit and is somewhat friendly to his servants. Then in episode 4 he reveals that his main reason for agreeing to a demonstration of religious equality is because it would infuriate Jan Paweł, showing he shares some of his neighbour's mean-spiritedness. And then he proves himself Jan Paweł's equal in scheming when seeking to wed his daughter with magnate's son and trying to hide the fact that they accidentally killed him. In the end, their main difference is the form of evil they represent: Jan Paweł is just obliviously stupid, while Andrzej is a pragmatic schemer.
- Foregone Conclusion: Jan Paweł Adamczewski wishes to be the most famous Jan Paweł in Polish history, but if you know that English version of Jan Paweł is John Paul you will know that he will fail.
- Foreign Culture Fetish:
- Sarmatism is effectively an obsession with a very specific brand of orientalism, but be careful to mention that in front of any of the noblemen.
- In turn, this is how Henryk's French fashion is treated in-universe.
- Foreign Exchange Student: Maciek came to Adamczycha from Lithuania as part of a "peasant exchange program", explicitly named after the contemporary real-life Erasmus Programme.
- The Fundamentalist: The mother, Zofia, is a religious fanatic who is frequently found prostrate on the floor, praying. Her son, who is a priest, is nowhere near as devout.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Aniela is a young Proper Lady, but at the same time she's also Rich Kid Turned Social Activist, which in the given setting makes her willingly participate in various physical tasks and labours and generally be heard, rather than merely seen.
- Happiness in Slavery: When Bohdan is captured by Tatars and locked, he is conten because his straw bed is twice as big as his one in Adamczycha, with the same amount of rats to eat.
- Hidden Depths: Zofia looks like a religious fanatic, but actually she has some secrets about her feelings.
- Historical In-Joke: The entire damn point of the series is poking fun out of modern, contemporary Poland via a mid-17th century backdrop and historical references.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: When Jan Paweł proposes Henryk Lubopolski a hunt in the local woods, without batting an eye, Henry asks if they can hunt some humans. When Jan Paweł gets startled by such a suggestion, Henryk starts laughing and says he was just kidding.
- I'm Standing Right Here: When discussing the prospect of not buying Bohdan from the Tatar slavery and instead taking a masked prisoner, Bohdan reminds the group that he's still here and can hear them.
- Illegal Religion: Inverted as in this case atheism is punished with death, while every other religion is not. Even one made up on the spot.
- Impoverished Patrician: Bohdan is a 6th-generation nobleman with nothing but his title and a lean horse.
- Just Before the End: The story is set in 1670, just as the Commonwealth is about to enter a period of rapid decline and semi-anarchy - in no small part thanks to people like Jan Paweł.
- Karmic Protection: No matter how bad Jan Paweł messes up, he never, ever has to face any consequences, and his problems tend to resolve on their own. Which only serve to further cement his conviction in his greatness.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: A running theme with the male side of the Adamczewski family (and Bohdan, who's a brother-in-law) is that they are all complete morons, but it doesn't stop them in the slightest from speaking up their minds on various subjects they have no clue about or throwing temper tantrums when being corrected.
- Leitmotif: Whenever Zofia shows up or even approaches the frame, an eerie theme on the flute starts playing.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: Andrzej isn't a saint nor even a really good person. However, for all his personal flaws, he is still a reasonable statesman and industrious, hard-working businessman, especially when compared with Jan Paweł.
- Lost in Translation: A lot of the humour depends on either knowing Polish, or at least the Polish literature. Otherwise, the audiences are facing a Viewers Are Geniuses scenario, where the majority of gags will completely fly over their heads without even registering them as humorous.
- Magic Mushroom: One episode has Bogdan, the deadbeat brother-in-law of the main character, eating fistfuls of hallucinogenic (unknowing to him) mushrooms and becoming convinced he's inherited the Sultanate from a goat.
- Medium Awareness: It's a mockumentary about a mid-17th century Polish noble family, so they are fully aware of the camera and the filming crew. Try not to overthink this too much.
- Miles Gloriosus: Bohdan brags about his military exploits, of which he's very proud. They involved participating... in every single defeat sustained by the Commonwealth over the past decade.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Aniela seems suspicious that her mother cheats on her father and follows her only to see that she was delivering charity to church and after that she has a affair behind her back.
- Mistaken Identity: Jakub mistakes one peasant with Jesus, only to discover that he was wrong after he tried to walk on water and drown.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Jan Paweł Adamczewski is out-of-universe named after the former pope John Paul (Jan Paweł) II, which is what the "most famous Jan Paweł" gag references. Adamczewski might be a reference to Piotr Adamczyk, the actor that famously played said pope in a 2005 biopic.
- Never Learned to Read: There's a gag in the first episode where an illiterate peasant brings Jan Paweł a letter, and as he tries to read it out loud for them, he reveals himself to be only marginally literate, spending a good minute trying to read a single sentence that he then fails to understand.
- Never My Fault: Jan Paweł MO. Anything going wrong is someone's else fault, especially when it was his own (un)doing, and he is pathologically incapable of taking blame in any form. It's hard to tell if it comes from the fact what sort of a jerk he is, how dumb he is, or both of those.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Lubopolski is not a real surname, but it sounds close enough to Lubomirski, a notorious magnate family that just kept meddling with the crown politics for well over a century, being synonymous with self-serving, Pragmatic Villainy and their fair share of entitled psychos within the "familia".
- Nobility Marries Money: In one episode Adamczewskis are trying to agree about marriage with rich merchant between his eldest son (who is desperate to get married) and the merchant's daughter.
- Not What It Looks Like: The Bounty Hunter searching for the killer of Henryk is there to reward the killer, not haul them to face justice.
- Only Sane Man: Maciej, a down-to-earth apprentice blacksmith. He's also the POV character for the audience, as he's from a "peasant exchange" and an outsider to Adamczycha and its mores.
- Overly Long Gag:
- The (barely literate) Jan Paweł spends an inordinately long time reading the single sentence of a letter that was sent to him - all shown to the viewer in real time.
- The various excuses Jan Paweł comes up with to avoid a duel he's sure to lose. The gag drags for nearly ten minutes.
- Parody Commercial: The travelling troupe of actors have a side gig for advertising a diet supplement in the style of the most cliche medicine commercial and then selling it after the show. Jan Paweł buys their entire supply.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: Stanisław, Jan Paweł's older son and heir of the family estate, is constantly on his phone looking at pictures. (It's really just a bunch of tapestry weavings in a wooden rectangle).
- Pointy-Haired Boss: Jan Paweł is a terrible boss to the serfs, being in the same time incompetent, harsh and demanding. This is just as much a joke about szlachta excesses and modern, small-town "entrepreneurs" who run their companies like a serf-staffed manorial estate.
- Police Procedural: The Bounty Hunter trying to find the killer of Henryk Lubopolski is a character from a completely different story and setting, playing all the cliches of the genre straight.
- Present-Day Past: A large chunk of the jokes boil down to putting contemporary concepts in a vaguely historical setting. To name a few from the first episode alone: Jan Paweł's (mis)management of his serfs is a parody of a certain type of incompetent Pointy-Haired Bosses typically associated with small Polish companies, Stanisław, his older son, has a garage band that, since garages don't exist yet, plays in a barn, and Jakub, the younger son and a priest, is introduced speaking like an overly demanding middle-manager from an international MegaCorp, only to reveal he's "praying". In particular, Aniela presents modern Western morals in things like gender equality, environmentalism and religious tolerance... a lot of it Played for Laughs, since it's 17th century.
- Pride Parade: Quite Lost in Translation as in Poland term Pride Parade is Equality March and the one is organised to celebrate other religions while presenting non-Catholic faiths as inferior and threating with death to atheists.
- Reckless Gun Usage: When trying to one-up each other, Andrzej and Jan Paweł do a speedy reload to be the first to kill an elk... only to instantly fire at Henryk when he emerges from the bush.
- Rich Kid Turned Social Activist: Aniela, the only daughter, tries to bring about recycling to end global warming which will kick off in... about 380 years.
- Rimshot: The travelling troupe needs a replacement "sound engineer", so they hire Maciej. His job consists of doing rimshots whenever someone dies in their plays. He quickly gets creative with it.
- Ruritania: The series is not really set anywhere within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but instead checks all the boxes for the Polish take on this trope - a rural, ultra-religious backwater ruled by an incompetent nobleman and his extended family, populated otherwise by apathetic serfs that are doing their very best to not work for their "mister".
- Running Gag:
- Every time when someone reminds that Andrzej owns half of village someone adds that he owns bigger half. (Not that it matters)
- "Poland for Poles ... and Lithuanians"
- Repeating every time Maciek’s introduction, when he was seen in first episode.
- Sex Sells: Invoked in-universe, where Aniela lowers one of the straps of her dress to get back the attention of the camera turning away from her speech, and then proceeds to chew the filming crew for being such simpeltons.
- Shout-Out:
- Actor troupe plans to present Avengers-like Crossover with characters from Shakespeare’s works - The People of Revenge.
- There is a nod to Let's Make a Deal (or rather its Polish version) when contemplating buying a masked Tatar prisoner, quoting the memetic lines of the Polish host of the show.
- In episode 7, Jakub and Bogdan are send to perform exorcisms on a young, blonde girl named Dobrusia, who is trapped in her dark bedroom, wearing a white nightdress, puking with slime and bending her body to extremes. Jakub says that's the fault of stress-free upbringing and keeps on acting like she's a rebellious teenager. Then, Bogdan comes near her and gets possessed himself.
- The last episode has a priest from Sandomierz solving crime cases, which is a reference to the Polish criminal series.
- Shipper on Deck: Jakub is an unusual malicious example towards Aniela and Maciej. He tries to get the two together, so that he can then reveal the relationship to his father and use the scandal to get his sister banished and himself left as the sole heir to the family fortune. Fortunately, he's not very good at it.
- Single-Precept Religion: Religion of Hatter. He wears a hat, after death he gives to good people potatoes and bad people pushes into a puddle. Justified as this religion was made up on a spot by an atheist peasant, who in other case would be killed.
- Sinister Minister: Jakub is greedy priest focused mainly on money.
- Sissy Villain: Henryk Lubopolski, a rich, French-styled bon-vivant with a bad case of Annoying Laugh and needing a servant for everything he does. None of which makes him any less of a monster, who, unlike Jan Paweł, takes great pleasure from bullying, beating, fucking - over and with - and killing people.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Andrzej, Adamczewski’s neighbor and owner of other half of village note , which Jan Paweł considers his main enemy.
- Slapstick: Easily the biggest source of humour are the various bouts of violence that are also almost never intentional, but always painful or over-the-top.
- Sleeping Dummy: When running away, Maciej set up an incredibly blatant one. It still took Bohdan a whole day to figure it out.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Jan Paweł Adamczewski, who consider himself the most famous Jan Paweł in Polish history despite a fact that his own subjects don't know his name.
- Small-Town Tyrant: Every single nobleman, but in case of Adamczycha, the small village is already split between two owners.
- Spiteful Spit: Any single mention of Swedes is going to cause this from Jan Paweł and his sons.
- Take That!: The series doesn't shy away from making jabs at stuff like the trinkle-down economy, picking comfort over preventing global warming, mobbing, bigotry and what not... by playing it all as very bleak Black Comedy.
- Token Minority: The Jew, who is the archetypical token Jew innkeeper, and the blacksmith's helper is a token Lithuanian.
- Too Clever by Half: For all - or maybe because - of his business acumen, Andrzej is eventually played by the grain merchant he was making all the deals with, leaving him with neither grain nor money and the merchant's debts to pay. Jan Paweł rubs it into his face.
- Truth in Television: While the series exaggerates many things for comedic effect, quite some gags actually have historical origin:
- Most of the plot in episode 4 comes from „celebration” of various faiths and Jan Paweł's attempts to not show his blatant favouritism for Catholicism. Religious freedom was in fact enshrined in Polish law since 1573, but by late 1600's constant wars with Sweden (Protestant), Moscow (Orthodox) and Ottoman Empire (Muslim) resulted in tolerance slowly disappearing.
- In last episode Andrzej has to sell his half of Adamczycha, since he faces financial trouble after his business with Czesław results in his assets being conficsated due to a royal decree "to preserve class differences". Throughout the 17th century Polish monarchs (or, more specifically, the Sejm) steadily put more and more restrictions on merchants and burghers, so that they wouldn't dominate the nobles economically.
- Visual Pun:
- In one scene Jan Paweł and others are comparing how well hung they are by… comparing part of their suits called „kutas” which is now slang term for penis.
- The medic arrives in Adamczycha in a cart with a rooster on the roof. In Polish slang, „kogut” (lit. rooster) is a term for emergency lamp on an ambulance.
- The Von Trope Family: Inverted, since Adamczewski surname is derived from a given name (Adam, duh), turning the village they reside in into a case of an incredibly small and quaint egopolis.
- Uptown Girl: Maciej (a peasant) falls mutually in love with Aniela (a nobleman's daughter).
- Villain Protagonist: Of the Obliviously Evil variety - Jan Paweł is a moron that actively makes the lives of everyone around him miserable and is utterly unable to learn any lessons, but because he's so incredibly stupid and self-centred, the harm he causes flies entirely over his head.
- Your Head A-Splode: Henryk Lubopolski died in this way after being shot accidentally by Jan Paweł and Andrzej in the same time.
