I've watched the series and it's impossible to know the real world problems the crew encountered during production, but IMHO it contains some of the ugliest modern interview footage I can remember seeing on Showtime in recent memory. Plenty of possible culprits to point at; shooting on Putin's home turf, the extra harsh added lighting, mostly clipped exposures on skin as well as highlights, really soft as well a way too sharp images + odd mismatched color/skin tones within the same scene like the cameras weren't prepped.... if it's color graded it obviously didn't help, etc.. Considering the depth of experience and expertise behind this production, I think we can safely rule out incompetency or lack of budget. Either way I was left wondering why all that high end talent would intentionally create that look, much less why they used the C-300MI or 5DMII in FHD and whether they are a problem or not. I waded through all 4 episodes just to hear the content but was constantly distracted with how really shitty it looked.