Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox, Sacha Dhawan, Gwilym Lee, Adam Godley, Douglas Hodge, Belinda Bromilow, Ramon Tikaram, Gillian Anderson, Bayo Gbadamosi, Florence Keith-Roach, Charity Wakefield, Danusia Samal, Claira Watson Parr, Tristan Bent, Jane Mahady, Julian Barratt, Alistair Green, Timoth Walker, Louis Hynes, Ali Ariaie, Eloise Webb, Dina Al Salih, Anthony Welsh, Keon Martial-Phillip, Freddie Fox, Grace Molony, Blake Harrison, Jason Issacs, Dean Nolan.
The winners and victors are the ones who get to place their interpretation of events into history’s ledger, but it is the right of future generations to squeeze the life out of it, to give it a hefty dose of scepticism, and pour satire from a great height all over the constructed chain of events.
Satire, parody, it all comes down the brevity of wit, and who else deserves it than the supposed great and the good, for the writers of victory, those who create empires out of another’s misery and serfdom; for satire is meant to prick the conscious, the inflated balloon of the woefully premeditated, and those seek fame by any name are right for the picking…even in empire’s past.
The allusion is that the events surrounding the reign of Catherine the Great are steeped in history’s awe and even partial myth, and in the first series of The Great, the lens of wilful lampoon found a figure, a nation, a class that was ripe for the taking, and absolutely got away with it by making sure people understood it was a distorted reflection based on some truth.
The Great’s second series goes further, in the aftermath of Catherine’s overthrowing of her husband, Peter, Russia is in the hands of supposed benevolence, enlightenment that has been enjoyed in Paris comes to the country, a great queen is on the throne, and yet prick that pomposity and the possible truth leaks out, that there is no greatness to be found in a country that allows its leaders to behave in such a way that would make grown-ups blush.
It is to the brilliance of its cast that The Great enjoys the attention of its audience, subtly anarchic, a straight face of delivery, observational, beautifully rebellious, and all made possible by the anachronism of Time; it is hoped that such pomposity of past can be seen to be overthrown in other areas of life in a shorter time than it has taken the decadence of Russia’s early imperialism, but until then, watching actors such as the charming Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, Pheobe Fox, Gwilym Lee, Sacha Dhawan, Adam Godley, and the excellent Douglas Hodge in their various character’s guises as they scheme and plot in the name of the Russia they wish to see rise, is enough to make any viewer see the beauty in the chaos of court.
With a splendid Gillian Anderson leaving her sizeable acting prowess on the series in the form of Catherine’s mother, the manipulating matchmaker Joanna, and Belinda Bromilow hammering home the revolutionary act of showing how the wheels of court and power actually was concocted and connected from behind the scenes in the form of Aunt Elizabeth, The Great is riotous and enjoyable television made by its tremendous cast and firmly in control of the mayhem of its creatives.
A romp through history has rarely been as satisfying.
Ian D. Hall