The Great: A Rambunctious Ride

My greatest takeaway from Hulu's new miniseries, The Great, has been a renewed appreciation of the many ways in which one can exclaim, "Huzzah!" I tend to type the word "huzzah" a lot in texts or emails, but ever since I started watching this show, it has become a more prominent part of my vocabulary. Because, you know, I can't just keep screaming profanity about the pandemic and police brutality all day long. I know life has been exceedingly hard these past few weeks, and everyone's gotta do what they gotta do. Donate to charity, go for a protest, apply for a mail-in ballot. But when you want to escape from real life for a bit, I highly recommend The Great. It makes for exquisite escapism.

Written and created by Tony McNamara (who wrote The Favourite, which is a clue to the kind of inanity this show serves up), The Great tells the story of Catherine the Great (played magnificently by Elle Fanning) when she arrives in Russia to marry Peter III and discovers that he is a buffoon who doesn't give a fig for all her enlightened ideals about the rights of man. Peter (played with joyous abandon by Nicholas Hoult) is a macho roisterer, who likes earthly pleasures, doesn't care about art and poetry, and is shocked that his new wife isn't utterly besotted by him.

Meanwhile, Catherine forms an alliance with her maid Marial (the gorgeous and brash Phoebe Fox), who is a fallen lady-in-waiting who helps Catherine understand all the nuances of court life, and Orlo (played to twitchy perfection by Sacha Dhawan), one of Peter's advisers who has grand ideas and is tired of the emperor's barbaric ways. Add to the mix, Leo Voronsky (Sebastian de Souza, who is now playing a lovely gentleman in stark contrast to his other Hulu role as the bad college boyfriend in Normal People), who Peter gifted to Catherine to serve as her lover. As they plot and scheme, they come up with the grand idea of staging a coup so Catherine can become Empress of Russia and lead the country out of the dark ages. What could go wrong?

You should not be watching The Great if you're expecting an actual history lesson (the title card specifically features an asterisk calling this "an occasionally true story"). A lot of the bonkers details are true, but many are simply made up to expedite the storytelling and lend it a gloriously frenzied pace. The set and costume design are lavish beyond belief and lend to the sense of fantasy about this whole enterprise. This show is ten episodes of sheer madness and mayhem, filled with sweary aristocrats, furious political plotting, and a never-ending barrage of wit and wickedness.  So sit back and escape with the profoundly profane and perfect The Great. Huzzah!