Art has always been connected with human emotions, and fear is one of them. What kinds of narrative patterns are used to depict emotions onscreen, for instance fear? This paper explores the emotion of fear, which predominates in a number of recent Russian TV series, by examining the language of fear onscreen in the intricate interaction of real-life schemata and fantasy, as well as the place of so-called ‘fear-narratives’ in broader contexts related to certain types of events and situations. It describes the tendency in recent Russian TV series, that can be called ‘Russian noir’, which plays with the emotion of fear, and seeks to answer the question, whether there are any differences in depicting and inducing the emotion of fear between the small screen and the big one.