The Great (2020)

Top comments

1. 

   Siskoid

   Obviously, The Great is The Favourite as a TV series, but also a spoof of a lot of shows about the aristocracy (The Borgias, The Crown, and so on), playing fast and loose with the historical material about Catherine the Great's rise to power, and indulging in anachronistic foul language and diversity casting. Obviously, there's some interest right now for vain morons in power, but I don't think the show overplays its hand in that regard (and yet manages to hit some beats that speak to the present day, which it couldn't have known about during production - that's having your finger on the pulse). It's caustically funny, but the danger in court is real, so the drama works better than the comedy (which makes a few missteps). Not going to lie, I found the first episode a little hard to watch. Before Catherine "gets Russia", it feels like this decadent court is heaping humiliations upon her without giving her recourse, and Emperor Peter is particularly unbearable. Did I want to watch 10 whole episodes of this? Well, by the third, I was merrily chugging through it, rooting for Elle Fanning's Catherine and her crusade to drag Russia into modernity. I like this cast very much, but Fanning is particularly good in the lead, whether idealistic, innocent, hurt, defiant, calculated, or passionate. Advertised as a mini-series, it does leave room for additional seasons, and I hope they go for it.
   
   I enjoyed the first season of The Great, but had some issues with it, and the second season seemed to lean hard in the wrong direction. Basically, with Catherine in power, I tended to root for her less and less, and was left with a lot of frankly trying potty-mouthed vulgarity. If Season 1 evoked the Trump years, Catherine facing opposition in her own court could have reached for a Biden era, but it really doesn't work that way. In the back half, things get much more interesting as one finds they are now rooting for poor, simple, love-lorn Peter and the show turns slowly but surely into one of the strangest love stories ever committed to film. But there's a heck of a lot of characters I want to see executed, seemingly kept alive by actor contracts. Not that the show pretends to be historically accurate. Indeed, it's at this point that I decided to finally check out Catherine the Great's Wikipedia entry and it seems it's 95% bollocks, not much chance of getting spoiled if you take a gander. 3 years 11 months ago

See all comments

Friends

Login to see which of your friends have seen this movie!