Who is Nikolai Katinsky?
Nikolai Katinsky is a former KGB officer living in London. Series 2 introduces him as somebody Jackson Lamb can question about the Cold War. The encounter immediately changes the atmosphere: a current investigation now depends on people who remember a different intelligence world, with its own loyalties, grudges and carefully managed accounts of the past.
His place in the story is best discovered gradually. Katinsky’s apparent modesty is part of what makes the conversations worth watching. He can supply information without making its significance obvious, and Lamb must decide which parts of an old story deserve attention. Knowledge is valuable here because the people who once shared it may no longer be available to contradict it.
Rade Šerbedžija’s performance
Rade Šerbedžija (agency profile) plays Katinsky; his agency lists the role under the credited spelling Rade Sherbedgia. He gives Lamb a conversational opponent rather than a simple physical obstacle. Their exchanges are compelling because each man is listening for something beyond the answer he has been given. A pause can seem more revealing than an accusation.
TheWrap’s Gary Oldman interview discusses their final Series 2 confrontation and Oldman’s choice to have Lamb eating crisps while waiting. That small detail captures the scene’s balance: ordinary behaviour sits beside extraordinary stakes. Katinsky belongs to the same world of experienced professionals, where sounding relaxed does not mean that nothing has been prepared.
Dead Lions and television
Dead Lions is the source novel for this story. Both versions connect a present-day death to the unfinished business of Cold War espionage. The television adaptation makes recognition immediate through meetings and faces; Herron has more room to control what readers know through shifting viewpoints and the assumptions embedded in an account.
Katinsky rewards a second viewing rather than a dossier of advance revelations. His importance is not measured by the number of scenes he occupies. A brief conversation can establish a direction for an entire investigation. Reading the book after the season also makes the structure easier to notice: who introduces an explanation, who accepts it, and who benefits when attention moves elsewhere.
Key relationships
Lamb is Katinsky’s essential counterpart. David Cartwright belongs to the same generation of intelligence history, while River encounters its consequences without having lived through its origins. That generational difference is crucial to Series 2: younger officers inherit danger long before they understand the decisions that created it.
Arc by series
Series 2 spoilers
Katinsky’s account of cicadas and Alexander Popov helps direct Lamb’s investigation after Dickie Bow’s death. By the closing episodes, the story has become a revenge operation directed at Lamb and linked to the Service’s earlier betrayal by Charles Partner.
The final meeting exposes how much of the apparent present-day plot has been organised around an old score. Katinsky confronts Lamb, but the encounter ends with Katinsky dead. The conclusion turns earlier exchanges into evidence of strategy rather than merely background exposition.
Episodes to revisit
Compare his introduction in From Upshott with Love with the final confrontation in Old Scores.
Questions and answers
Who plays Nikolai Katinsky?
Rade Šerbedžija plays Katinsky, credited under the spelling Rade Sherbedgia.
Which series features Katinsky?
Katinsky’s story belongs to Series 2, adapting Dead Lions.
Is Katinsky the same character as Patrice?
No. Patrice belongs to the later Frank Harkness storyline; Katinsky is the former Soviet officer introduced in Series 2.