What is "ottepel"

Оттепель (sometimes translated as Ottepel or The Thaw) is a Russian television series. Valery Todorovsky debuted as a TV director with it. The series is a melodrama about life in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev Thaw, specifically about film artists of the age. Relational is that Todorovsky's father worked on film in roughly this era. In the West the series has been compared to Mad Men in terms of tone and visuals, though the subject and plots are quite different.