TV Review: "The Regime" is a Hot Mess Without a Lot to Say
Despite its formidable talent both behind and in front of the camera, the new HBO series fails to really say anything of substance. Even more devastatingly, it's not even that entertaining.
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Like a lot of other people, I was really looking forward to The Regime, the new HBO series starring Kate Winslet as a delusional dictator of a faltering European despot. I mean, how could you wrong with a show that boasted enormous talent both behind and in front of the camera, led by the goddess Kate Winslet herself? Surely, many people thought, this was going to be a delicious satire on the same wavelength as Veep and Succession.
As it turns out, there are a number of ways that you can go wrong, particularly when you create a show that, as many critics have aptly noted, doesn’t seem to have much of a grasp as to what it’s supposed to be saying and what is supposed to be the object of its satire. There are strains of such black comedies as Succession and political satires like Veep built into its setup and its execution, and there are some obvious parallels to The Death of Stalin. There are also some very obvious (sometimes too obvious) real-world parallels, including Elena’s histrionic germaphobia (a clear allusion to Putin) and her effort to distract her populace by launching an attack of reclamation on the period known as the (see also: Ukraine).
The problem, however, is that these don’t add up to much. Tonally the series can’t quite figure out whether it wants to be a straight drama or whether it wants to be an absurdist comedy, and it veers wildly between these two extremes, making it difficult if not impossible for us as viewers to determine just what it is that it’s trying to say (assuming that it’s actually trying to say something, which I found myself doubting by the end). Even the romance between Elena and brutal soldier turned water diviner turned adviser Herbert Zubak (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) never really quite gels, both because the latter is such a distastefully one-note character and because the series never really commits nor gives us much reason to care about them as a couple.
What does work is Kate Winslet’s performance. From the very moment that we meet her, it’s clear that Elena is the worst combination of nepo baby and autocrat, having come to power largely because her father had already secured the chancellorship through a coup. Indeed, the old man–currently decaying in a glass case that is kept in the palace–continues to exert a strong hold on his daughter in the present, and there’s even a moment when she has a delusion that he is speaking to her from beyond the grave. Elena clearly has daddy issues, which is precisely what makes her so vulnerable to Zubak’s brutish charms. Winslet’s performance turns Elena into a tragicomic figure, someone we pity as much as we mock.
But don’t let her absurdities fool you. Elena is a monster, capable of inflicting casual cruelty on both her intimates–such as one particular –and her political enemies alike. When the sugar beet farmers and factory workers begin to express dissatisfaction with her introduction of Chinese products into the marketplace, she sees to it that evidence of a coup is planted in their midst, which justifies repressive action. Unfortunately for her, she quickly finds out, as many other dictators have, that there comes a point where even the most docile populace will rise up against her. Unfortunately, this all happens with such speed–courtesy of time jumps–that we don’t really get much substantive insight into the actual mechanisms of how this all comes to pass. It’s as if the writers had a plot they had to stick to, no matter how undeveloped it ends up feeling.
More interesting, I think, are the various maneuverings by Elena’s underlings, all of whom are some mix of venal, self-interested, toadying, or politically effective. There are several moments when we see them gathered for a meeting, wherein they peck and claw each other as much as they point out Elena’s flaws and ineptitude as a ruler, and I particularly enjoyed seeing David Bamber as the cowardly flunky Victor Schiff, mostly because I was already familiar with his work as Cicero in HBO’s Rome. These scenes are fun but, like so much of the rest of the series, they don’t really add up to any substantive critique or insight.
If there’s one storyline that does seem to have some emotional weight, it’s that involving Andrea Riseborough’s Agnes, whose young son Oskar has been essentially adopted by Elena as her own, regardless of what the boy or his mother might think about the matter. It’s clear that Agnes bears Elena a lot of love and loyalty, though what remains unexplained is why this would be the case. Unfortunately, her storyline too is given short shrift with almost no emotional payoff, particularly since she is killed in the penultimate episode when rebels take over the palace, while her son’s fate remains both unexplained and unacknowledged. If you found yourself actually involved in these characters, I’m sorry to report that there really is no payoff to speak of.
By the time I finished the season, I wasn’t at all sure what to make of what I’d just watched. There were times when I really did enjoy the way that it skewered the absurd and pompous self-regard in which far too many autocrats (and would be autocrats) hold themselves. At others, I simply sat there with my partner, neither of us quite sure what we were watching or what we were supposed to be taking away from it. We felt that way at the beginning and, unfortunately, we felt that way at the end.
I’m not entirely sure how the show could have cohered more. Would it have helped to have had a few more episodes in which to develop the story and the characters? Perhaps. The show features one or two too many time jumps, which are a bit jarring and do a lot of heavy lifting to allow the viewer to see just how quickly Elena’s actions lead to the downfall and collapse of her regime. Arguably the series’ greatest error was in choosing to do a mixture of comedy and drama rather than opting for one or the other. As it turns out, it does neither very well, and it ultimately ends up being a great deal of sound and fury, signifying nothing.