The Great

Review: John Winterson Richards

It seems that the Empress Catherine II of Russia is a heroine for our times. She has long been a symbol of national pride and expansion in Russia, where such ideas are now fashionable again. Two recent epic series based on her life, titled Ekaterina and Catherine the Great in global markets, were made almost simultaneously by competing Russian television channels. Perhaps more surprisingly, she has become a feminist role model in the West in the wake of "Me Too" - the ideal of a strong and successful independent woman in power with a supposedly "liberal" and "progressive" agenda ...as long as one does not examine the historical facts too closely. So last year Catherine was honoured with another television series called 'Catherine the Great,' this one in English, in which she was played by Dame Helen Mirren, no less.

Since three major television series is a trend, and being played by Dame Helen is the seal of approval for any Monarch, the time was right for a more satirical take on Catherine, and The Great is certainly that. Described as a "comedy drama," it is written by Tony McNamara, who also wrote the acclaimed feature film 'The Favourite,' which starred Olivia Colman as Queen Anne, so we ought to know what to expect in terms of historical veracity, or lack thereof.

To list all the inaccuracies in The Great would therefore take too long and is, in any case, unnecessary. The show really means what it says when it subtitles itself as "An Occasionally True Story." It is not meant to be taken seriously as history, which it uses in much the same way that Blackadder did - as a resource to be mined for comedy. Remember that 'Blackadder' analogy. It helps a lot.

Indeed, there may be only two solid historical facts in the whole series: there was once a very bright German girl called Catherine who married a very inadequate Emperor named Peter - and the story about her and the horse is absolutely untrue.

That is basically it. Almost everything else is made up. If you can just accept that, you might enjoy it far more than you imagined when you first heard that it was a comedy about an 18th Century Benevolent Despot.

Much of that is due to the charm with which Elle Fanning plays Catherine. She is presented as a sort of Jane Austen heroine - perhaps the naive, well meaning Emma - except with something of a potty mouth. Indeed, while the show has much that might appeal to costume drama fans, some of them might be put off by the sex and violence and bad language, which is considerable and constant.

Catherine arrives in Russia overflowing with new ideas from fashionable books and romantic optimism about her arranged marriage with the Emperor Peter. She is soon disillusioned: Peter turns out to be a spoilt overgrown child, a dull man who thinks he is clever because no one dares to contradict him.

We return to 'Blackadder' because Nicholas Hoult is of a generation which grew up with that show - and seems to have been particularly influenced by Hugh Laurie's portrayal of Prince George in  'Blackadder the Third.' He certainly appears to be channelling Laurie in his performance as Peter. This is no bad thing: one might even say "Huzzah!" However, where Prince George was merely an amiable dolt, Peter - in The Great, not history - is the product of an upbringing in which the ability to kill, or order killing, easily and without remorse is an essential survival trait. He is a clown in the sense that Caligula was a clown: his unpredictability means he is equally capable of being ridiculous or vicious. He is sometimes very vicious.

For all her romantic dreams, and her determination to make the marriage work, Catherine soon realises that she is not what he wants in a wife and he is definitely not what she wants in a husband: they have no respect for each other. However, she must hide her feelings because one of the things that rather puts her off him is that he gives real consideration to having her killed.

Catherine therefore resolves to dedicate herself to serving Russia rather than her husband. She makes several attempts to persuade him to reform his country and help his people in line with the books she has read. There are moments when she appears to be making progress with him only to see him return to the old ways. She comes to the conclusion that she cannot work through Peter and so must replace him ...with herself.

Then, almost half way through, everything changes. Catherine gets an unexpected opportunity to do the very thing she wants, but it does not go as she assumed. She discovers that she is ill prepared: her book reading has given her little understanding of the realities of the political situation. At the same time a hitherto sympathetic character commits an act of shocking brutality out of expediency. Catherine is forced to consider the possibility that a capacity for sudden violence, like Peter's, is a better qualification for ruling Russia than her philosophising.

It is a beautifully executed reversal. The tone of the whole piece is altered. Catherine sees it is no longer a game. Things are serious after all.

It is at this point that Catherine really begins to develop as a character. She learns from her mistakes and proceeds more cautiously. Outwardly, she remains light-hearted but now she understands that that she must not only depose her husband but kill him. The viewer's feelings may also shift a little. Murderous, manipulative Catherine is not as likeable as innocent victim Catherine. There is also the question of whether Peter really deserves it. There are times when he seems eager to please and tries to do the right thing. Is it his fault that his upbringing has made him what he is? Is there no hope that he might change?  The awkward truth is that Hoult has made us rather too fond of Peter. Whatever else, he is entertaining.

It is greatly to McNamara's credit that all of his characters are three dimensional. Catherine is not wholly good and Peter is not wholly bad. No one is. Even the supporting characters have depth. Peter's mistress (Charity Wakefield) is sometimes kind to Catherine, sometimes fiercely loyal to Peter, sometimes self serving, and sometimes concerned about her husband (Gwilym Lee) - who, as Peter's best friend, has conflicted feelings of his own. Catherine's closest allies, her wonderfully straight-faced maid (Phoebe Fox) and a nervous "liberal" politician (Sacha Dhawan), have their own issues which undermine their dedication to her conspiracy. Her officially appointed lover (Sebastian de Souza) is loyal to her but proves a useless conspirator.

It is kept nicely uncertain whether Peter's apparently dotty aunt (Belinda Bromilow) really is that dotty - there are momentary hints that she might be the shrewdest player of all. It is typical of historical drama that the Archbishop - called simply "Archie" (played by the appropriately named Adam Godley) - who represents the official Church is shown as a traditionalist fanatic with a taste for dubious mushrooms. However, McNamara also makes him a very intelligent politician who was once a man of the world before finding a sincere faith and who has deeds of genuine kindness to his credit. Similarly, the Commander-in-Chief (Douglas Hodge, excellent) seems at first no more than a hopeless drunk whose expressions of love for Catherine cross the line of what "Me Too" might call "appropriate." Yet it turns out that he is actually a good soldier - when Peter's amateurish interference allows him to be - who cares about the lives of his men.

While the comedy remains to the very end, especially in a positively hilarious episode in which Peter and Catherine meet their Swedish counterparts, the "comedy drama" gradually becomes more dramatic. Catherine's careful plans for a 'coup d'état' prove to be of as little value as her theoretical reading. Events take over, and she learns the true price of power when she has to make a heart-breaking choice. The whole thing concludes with a superbly ambiguous cut as a pistol is fired: we do not see the consequences of her choice but the implications are clear - after all, the series is not called The Great for nothing. History tells us what she became.

Since it was made as a "miniseries," with the proposal of subsequent seasons rejected explicitly, The Great is, at the time of writing, officially over. There is the possibility that might change. A lot of people like the idea of a sequel, even if there is a danger that the grim realities of Catherine's actual reign might detract from the hint of hope on which it ended.

If that does indeed prove to be the very end of The Great, then at least it finished when it lived up to its name. It was a masterpiece of both storytelling and characterisation with truly outstanding production values in every department. The costumes, props, and sets were gloriously colourful (apparently, they exhausted the United Kingdom's store of gold leaf paint and more had to be imported), and the use of location was very effective, with Caserta - the largest Royal Palace in the world, the King of Naples' response to Versailles - and several British stately homes standing in surprisingly credibly as St Petersburg.  If the "colour blind" casting seemed a little odd at first, it was not too jarring since it was soon obvious that nothing else was meant to be accurate either.

This is after all a show in which Catherine claims that she has met Descartes and that he smelled of cheese - when he would have smelled worse than that, having been dead for about a century by that point. French writers are used simply for name dropping, while later Russian writers, or their characters, provide convenient surnames for the supporting cast - Chekhov, Gorky, Rostov, Raskolnikov. We realise that were never really in 18th Century Russia at all but in the realm of the absurd - and great fun it was too.

Season 2

The season as a whole can be summed up very easily as a classic example of "the difficult second." The problem with any novel or album or work of art that is praised as original and unique is that those selling points are lost immediately when one tries to do the same thing again. The first season of The Great was something different, a breath of fresh air. It seems to have been written with the sincere intention that it would remain a one-off miniseries. When its success made that unlikely - it is basically the only thing Hulu and Starz had going for them at that time - the commercial reality of the situation dictated more of what had worked before rather than a radically new direction.

So Season Two is entertaining, for the same reasons and in the same way as Season One, but all sense of novelty is gone.

The first season ended on a powerful, dramatic note. The second picks up the story four months later with little changed, implying that the heartbreaking choice Catherine had to make has turned out to be rather pointless.

The bright, well-meaning German born Empress of Russia is still engaged in a civil war with her boorish but amusing husband. This seems to consist entirely of two Court factions occupying different wings of the Imperial Palace. Catherine's side seems to be running out of the momentum that is crucial to a 'coup,' while Peter and his friends are simply partying.

Since we know that Catherine is going to become Catherine the Great - the title is a bit of a clue - it is no spoiler to reveal that she eventually gets the better of him. However, a brilliant combination of very dark humour, bordering on farce, with real tragedy makes what should be the joyous moment of her Proclamation as Reigning Sovereign a bittersweet experience.

The first episode therefore ends with a tragic image - the significance of which is barely mentioned again. It is as if a major story arc of the first season never happened.  

That is just one of the reasons the next few episodes are slightly disappointing. Another is that Catherine becomes less likeable. Adversity and success are the two great tests in life. In adversity Catherine grew stronger, but success brings out the worst in her. She develops something of a vicious streak. She talks hatefully of killing Peter and, less justifiably, the Patriarch "Archie" (Adam Godley). She threatens and taunts those in her power to their faces. She becomes mean and capricious.

Happily, it pulls out of this nosedive just in time. Once again, Catherine's book learnt ideas run into a solid wall of reality in the form of Russia. It soon becomes clear that she still does not understand her adopted country or its people, and she has not thought all her clever schemes through. When this is exposed rather brutally in a crisis, her instinct is to double down on reform, thus losing the support of even her closest allies. When this results in predictable disaster, she remains incapable of admitting she was wrong. We are therefore led to the surprising conclusion that foolish Peter may have the better grasp of how to rule Russia.

Peter evolves as a character in Season Two in a way Catherine does not. He reflects on his defeat and the mistakes that led to it. He is honest with himself. He seeks to change, at first so that he may regain power, but then he begins to question whether he really wants it. 

Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs are well cast in guest roles as Catherine's mother and Peter's father respectively - since the latter, in the show but not in history, is Peter the Great, he appears as a ghost. Both parents are very disappointed with their children. 

The second season ends, like the first, with some dramatic events, even if they do not have quite as much emotional impact. Perhaps this is a sign that the story is ready to move on at last. It is time.

Season 3

As much as The Great was very entertaining, it was in danger of outstaying its welcome.

The producers seem to have been aware of that, and, perhaps to show they mean business this time, Season Three starts with a literal bang in the form of the abrupt departure of a major cast member in its first episode. It is perhaps a little too abrupt, rather throwing away an interesting character and leaving his arc frustratingly incomplete. Of course, such things happen in real life, the life most of us end up leaving with our character arcs incomplete, and it was perhaps a useful reminder that the Court of Catherine the Great is a place where sudden death is always on the line after things were getting a little too cosy.

It is as amusing as ever, but while the first season balanced the comedy with some genuine drama, the third, like the second, is mostly froth. We are supposed to share in what the characters feel as a big emotional moment, but it requires us to have worse memories than they apparently do.

The acting is also of a consistently high standard, and it is not the principal actors' fault that most of their characters remain in a holding pattern. There is, however, some welcome new blood in the form of two additions to the recurring cast who add value to the proceedings. It is good to see more of Henry Meredith as Maxim, Marial's precocious, shoe-obsessed 11-year-old husband: their interactions, which make them sound like a bickering old married couple, are great fun. So is Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, as Catherine's supremely self-confident new General, Petrov, who admits frankly that life is easy for him because he is impossibly handsome. The writers missed an opportunity by not giving his character the name Potemkin, the real Catherine the Great's most celebrated lover.

The interplay between Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult is better than ever - which is where we get back to the problems. This is not supposed to be their love story, but it has turned into it. Enjoyable as this is, an objective critic has to say that it is blatant fan service at the expense of story and character. History is clear that Catherine deposed Peter with ruthless efficiency and he died in captivity suspiciously soon after. Of course, The Great has never cared much about history but turning it into a romance puts both characters in a very artificial situation dramatically as well as factually.

The only character who progresses, or rather shows more of another side to herself that has always been there, is Aunt Elizabeth (Belinda Bromilow), who at one point is on the verge of taking over because Catherine can no longer cope. A slightly chilling scene confirms what we have suspected for some time, that Elizabeth might indeed be the best person for the job. It is worth noting that this fictional Elizabeth is based very loosely on a real life Empress Elizabeth who preceded Catherine and paved the way for her, excelling her in some respects. However, The Great is about Catherine the Great, so our protagonist reasserts herself in the final episode and Elizabeth gives way to her, a little too compliantly one feels.

The very last scene gives Catherine a splendid "girl boss" moment, spoilt a little by a sadly predictable line about how it was not Destiny that made her but herself. One cannot help thinking that line would sound crass and arrogant if spoken by a man, and also that it is not really earned by the events we have just seen. For much of the season Catherine comes across as indecisive and many of the decisions she does make are bad.

Yet the scene itself, and in particular a wholly anachronistic dance, provides the perfect end to the show. This begs the question whether the producers and writers were aware that cancellation was likely. The number of unresolved character arcs among the supporting cast suggests otherwise. So was the way the entertainment news media seem to have been taken completely by surprise by the announcement soon after the season aired.

This in turn begs the other obvious question: why was such a popular show cancelled? After all, Hulu's schedule of original programming looked very bare without it. Of course, it all comes down to money and this was visibly not a cheap show to make.

The camerawork, production design, costumes, and use of locations are outstanding, exceeding, even the cinematic levels of excellence set in the previous seasons. Whatever else, The Great deserves to be remembered as one of the best looking shows ever put on television. If it was expensive, the money is all there on the screen.

Judged purely as a work of drama, or even literature, the show would perhaps have done better to remain a "limited series" and to have ended with what is now Season One, but the commercial realities of television are what they are, and, in any case, if it had ended then, we would have missed out on a lot of fun in the last two seasons.