After High Water and Heweliusz, directors Jan Holoubek and Kasper Bajon start shooting Skóry, a psychological thriller with a serious crew behind it. It premieres in 2028.
Jan Holoubek and Kasper Bajon are back, and this time their protagonist is a failed wrestler with a prison record and a new job on an ambulance crew. Netflix has announced Stiffs (original title Skóry), a six-episode psychological thriller. Cameras are already rolling, and the series arrives in 2028.
The pairing is the real headline. Holoubek and Bajon follow the success of High Water and Heweliusz, and Skóry is the third time they have turned to real events as raw material. Their stated interest is people: the choices they make and what those choices cost. Both directors share the credit on this one, and Bajon is also among the writers.
A fictional man in a real story
The series is inspired by the “Skin Hunters” case, which shocked Poland in the early 2000s. But it is not a reconstruction. The creators call it fiction and their own interpretation, and they built it around Bundzior, a character invented for the series. Convicted of drug trafficking and out of the ring for good, he joins the Łódź ambulance service. He soon learns that in this world a patient’s death is worth money, and an arriving ambulance does not always mean rescue. His choice is to keep profiting or risk everything to expose it.
Bajon explains why an invented lead suits the material: “I do not believe in a simple division between good and evil, nor that anyone is predestined to commit a crime. I am interested in how much responsibility we bear for our own choices, and how strongly those choices are shaped by circumstance. Fictional characters allow us to explore these dilemmas in a more universal way.” He also says the story speaks to the present. “The lure of easy money and the expectation of instant rewards are not confined to the past,” he says. “They are impulses we still recognise today.”
Holoubek’s ambitions are as much historical as dramatic. He says he feels the story “has never been fully told,” and he sees the series as a way of paying tribute to those who lost their lives and those who suffered for years. He also sees a duty to portray “the broader social and economic realities of Poland’s transformation.” To keep the scripts grounded, the team brought in Tomasz Patora as consultant. Patora wrote the nonfiction book Skin Hunters: Secrets of the Crimes at the Łódź Ambulance Service.
The people behind the camera
The crew list reads like a team that intends to be taken seriously. Bajon writes alongside Kinga Krzemińska, Łukasz Czapski and Ksawery Bajon. Bartłomiej Kaczmarek is director of photography, and Maciej Fajst is production designer. Weronika Orlińska and Magdalena Bem handle costume. Mirela Zawiszewska and Justyna Osińska are on make-up. Rafał Listopad edits, Jan Komar composes, and the sound team is Jerzy Murawski and Kacper Habisiak MPSE.
Fremantle Polska is producing, with Julita Brutus, Maria Gołoś and Monika Matuszewska as producers. Żywia Kosińska-Wdowiak is casting director, and the cast will be announced later.
Those production roles matter for a series like this. The story depends on texture: the look of a city mid-transition, the clothes and faces of people living in it, and the sound of an ambulance heard as either hope or warning. Fajst, the costume designers and Kaczmarek will carry much of that.
Shooting across Poland’s industrial heartland
Filming runs through April 2027, and the map is part of the pitch. The crew is working in Łódź, Warsaw and across Silesia, with Katowice, Chorzów and Sosnowiec on the list alongside others. Łódź anchors the story, and the Silesian cities add the post-industrial backdrop that Holoubek’s talk of Poland’s transformation points to.
The announcement also fits Netflix’s wider investment in Polish storytelling. The company’s Poland and CEE team is again backing homegrown directors with a locally rooted, true-story-inspired drama made by a Polish production company. Skóry keeps that formula, with the same two directors who made the earlier titles.
Two years is a long wait for a premiere. The announcement already shows who is behind the camera and what they want from the story. Stiffs arrives in 2028, only on Netflix.
Via Netflix
