The biggest problem with this show is the same problem as all those young adult dystopia novels had: the writers fundamentally don't understand politics outside of a modern western framework. They've never experienced anything like a dictatorship, they can't grasp the concept of non-democratic politics, palace intrigue, or hard power. They have only known soft power and our modern understanding of popular sovereignty, which is totally antithetical to what they're trying to make. That's why you have a supposed dictatorship that reads indistinguishable from a parliamentary democracy and dissident elites talking about a "constitution" and not simply seizing power by capturing enough counter-elites.
I disagree, I explained in a comment why but having grown up in an authoritarian regime, I think it was well written but this is what happens when you look at power from the POV of powerful people. They only see soft power, they're too out of touch; they don't see the hungry, homeless, poor people, the bad roads or poor infrastructure because they live in a comfortable capsule, private jets and palaces. Of course we can't see the other side because the story is told from Elena's point of view.
These are exactly my thoughts when somebody asks me, a Russian, "why we just don't go to the streets and protest". Bet you've never lived in an autocracy, my boy... never.
@mantolinez exactly. People dont understand that in non-liberal countries, power exists independent of the will of the people. And I wouldn't even put mordern Russia all that high on the list of authoritarian countries. What's portrayed in this show is more like an ex-soviet state like Romania
The shows inability to define the regime I think is a major misstep, it seems to shifts between wanting a full-blown dictatorship and an illiberal democracy, having the regime be a story about democratic backsliding could have been an interesting perspective with Elena slowly turning into a dictator but the show seemed unwilling to go that direction to its own detriment
@@obeshy that may have been what they attempted but but as you said do to shit writing they kinda failed at it, governments like Hungary and Turkey, illiberal Democracies, that have authoritarian characteristics are very different from nations who were apart of the Warsaw pact and the show kinda kept flip flopping between these two stances
I kinda feel like they stayed away from that because a woman was the lead and they didn’t want to portray her as totally evil. They should’ve just not made the show
@typie34 what's funny is just how accurate it was, as a historian my only problem with the movie (and this is a small problem and not a true inaccuracy) is that the events in the movie were months apart while the film gives the impression of just a few weeks at most, which I think is just a constraint of putting eveything in single film, still a 10/10 film
I think there was a point in the end. That as long as you do as the US wants you get to stay in power. Which is true. But in general the show was total garbage.
@@ImperialMJG I believe we can all think of a lot of examples of countries whose governments have stayed power for decades despite not complying with U.S. interests
@@ImperialMJGyes, but you’re missing the point. As long as there are examples of countries that stayed in power without complying with the US, you’re original argument that you need to comply to stay in power becomes untrue or at least a weak argument.
@@ImperialMJG I think it was she would do anything to stay in power. It wasn't about the country/culture or her character or virtue as important, it was just her being the leader & staying in power.
I remember being so excited for this show, then watched a single episode and was immediately put off. You have to actually understand historical and contemporary politics in order to write about it. Everything they're trying to comment on felt either slightly off-the-mark, oversimplified, or just...wrong. The show feels like what would happen if chatGPT processed through a bunch of real-life data about autocratic regimes, and produced a off-putting surface level mashup of all the data, because that's all a machine is capable of doing.
They just didn't have any knowledge to tell such this story, just a vague premise. I wanted Gillian Anderson as a ruthless, smart female dictator leading her country out of Communism. Instead we got... weird personal wellness nonsense. And no Gillian Anderson.
As someone who was born and lived in the Soviet Union, this show seemed to me like it was created by someone(s) who never really experienced the actual reality of living under a dictatorial regime. It's like someone who has never tasted sugar but is trying to describe what one experiences when tasting sugar. Yes, there were some somewhat accurate depictions of concepts but overall it was just neither here nor there. An oxymoron of sorts.
Crazy what happens when you have writers who really REALLY want to live like this and the reality and historical content that just spits in their faces....so in a way this kinda show is expected lol
it was like Death of Stalin but without any specific type of regime it was meant to represent it felt hollow. They could have made a show about Ceausescu's Romania which was such a shitshow it would have been a great satire.
I didn’t know who they were trying to impersonate. Part of me thought it was an ‘if Marine Le Pen’ gained power. Other part of me thought it was meant to be Orban or Putin.. it really didn’t make any coherent sense
The funniest part of this show was that Kate had to so adamantly announce in interviews that it was, in fact, a comedy... followed by a look of utter desperation and a sincere plea for people to actually watch it. It would be like a comedian announcing, "FUNNY JOKE COMING UP RIGHT HERE EVERYONE, prepare yourselves to laugh... please... I am about to do comedy, and although it may not be immediately recognized as such, I assure you that it is funny." 😐
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116A good comedian would make sure that their insults to the audience are funnier than the joke they just bombed. An unfunny one will just bomb at that too
After listening to all the points you’ve mentioned, I would say that this series suffers from the “don’t want to be” syndrome. They didn’t want to be directly compared to real regimes or dictatorships, and they didn’t want people to associate the regime with systems like monarchies. These are all things I remember, and both the actors and producers have also pointed them out in several interviews. In itself, there’s no problem with this; the problem arises when you try so hard to avoid comparisons that you end up putting more effort into not being like others than into being yourself and saying something consistent that captures the audience’s interest. A shame, really, because as you said, they had all the elements to succeed: cast, budget, writers, and producers. I was highly anticipating this show, but I got bored after two or three episodes. I will always sign up for anything starring Kate Winslet, and I think this series had potential. By the way, I also don’t understand why people referred to the series as a comedy 😂😂😂
There it is! Right there... it was boring. I too stopped after 2 episodes. Also... no one to root for. And... no humor, everything fell flat. It committed the ultimate television sin - it wasted my time.
@@GS-vb3zn I barely made it through E1. Kate Winslet is one of this generation's greatest actresses, but the writing is so meh even she couldn't save the show.
The writers obviously have no idea what a regime like this is, how people in power get power, how they stay in power and how they lose that power. It's just a vague mess and it doesn't have much to say. But at least the costumes are nice.
its ironic they tried to write this show like it was a completely unnamed country, because the thing I think about when I think of the USSR, Maoist China, Nazi Germany etc. is that they just sprang out of nowhere and that history had no part in forming them....lol
@@carsen1GTFO In order to have a political satyre you need to have context. For example. If you look up for song "Dobře míněná rada" or "Jdi domů Ivane" here on youtube you get up beat song about guy named Ivan who should go home. Reason is that girls here do not like him and back home his girl Natasha is waiting for him, but may get tired and would chose rather Voloda. But video you would see during this song would probably be made out of pictures from year 1968 when my country was occupy by her former ally USSR. Reason for this is that Ivan is stand in for Russians and author of the song is telling them to go back home and never to return. Simple, yet effective message ensure that this song becomes wildly known and after our hockey team beaten USSR at the World Championships in Stockholm 1969 this song was sung through whole country. But without the context it is just catchy song from 1960s era.
I was so disappointed in this. The creator of it, Will Tracy, wrote excellent episodes of Succession especially the famed season 2 episode “Tern Haven” so I had high hopes and his involvement was why I was interested in watching it in the first place.
Succession is ultimately Wealth Porn and it succeeds because the characters were interesting and presented sympathetically, despite everyone actually being terrible. There's no actual morality to it. It's ultimately about... nothing. No surprise this failed.
@@doyleharken3477 pretty sure they are just being ridiculous and implying those countries have broken down and likely some xenophobia involved therein.
Or the county being set elsewhere instead of central europe, like somewhere in latin america or middle east. Places where pro US authoritarian regimes are common Imagine the vast amount of fictional history and creative worldbuilding the writers can create
I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, so I looked up MT to remind me what she looked like, and a few quotes. I can picture Barrymore as her (It took a few minutes), moreso after reading this quote, “Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.”, but full disclosure, she turns back into long haired hippy Drew with other quotes 😆 My GOODNESS! Quite a few of her quotes did not age well! 😅
It failed because it was absolutely stupid. Kates character is extremly boring. And her "insanity" being carried in a box because she is afraid of something which I was to bored to understand cause it looked so idiotic. There is no satire. A good dictator series is "Tyrant". Thats how you make a real dictator show. And they could have done it with a country set in Europe...but without the satire cause its just stupid. Also give the country a name.
The show had a choice make a dark drama about a regime, or make a comedy about USSR or its satellite states. Which would have been comedy gold bunkers everywhere, a giant parliament building which is too big to be actually useful. Poorly made underground railways. Grandma’s snitching on everyone, a weird obsession over jeans.
@@clarapilier Yeah but the reason Death of Stalin works is because it's satirizing a real regime and real people in it. The Regime falls apart 'cause it's satirizing a vague idea of something. If it was a political drama instead, I think it might have done better.
“Are we the baddies?” I’d say it is a great lense under which to examine the theme, as so many have successfully done before. “Satirising the fasho’s” isn’t exactly an untapped mine
What death of Stalin does right is show sycophants fighting for control after a powerful dictator dies. Their incompetence makes sense because they are all incompetent. An dictator doesn't make sense if there underlings and support base think it's easy to undermine them
It was too self-indulgent. It was like a pointless, meandering Wes Anderson rip-off. What a waste of resources and talent of what could have been a cogent, scathing satire of authoritarian regimes and the neoliberal corporations that fund them.
The show could have done with much tighter theming - ultimately to me it was a show about toxic love and hit really close to home. The politics and plots around that just felt like heavy handed set dressing. Which was odd, because I was expecting Death of Stalin political satire. Winslet was fantastic, and her accent was just hilarious. Zubak embodied the worst of toxic masculinity which was extremely uncomfortable (in the good way). The set, costumes and music was fantastic. Ultimately the show feels a lot like modern media - its "a good first draft" with good ideas but needed a lot more work to be something great.
Yeah... not funny enough to work as a comedy, not relevant enough to be a satire, and too silly to be a drama. I can 100% see why Winslet took the part though. What a role, and she did a great job.
I couldn’t keep up with the vast majority of the characters in this even with captions. I would forget who was working for her or against her. It was beautifully shot, but that’s about it.
And one more thing I forgot: there are seemingly Christmas tree-like decorations everywhere in the show. This seems to be a subtle nod to how the ceausescu couple were executed on Christmas Day.
It was like they tried to combine the Alexandre Desplat soundtrack and colour scheme of The Grand Budapest Hotel with the political satire of the Death of Stalin and created something not as good as either. It felt like a very dated portrayal of an “Eastern” post Soviet Europe by Western writers and producers who didn’t seem that well versed in the history and culture of the region. It reminded me of the fictional state Ruritania of The Prisoner of Zenda or the fictionalised Balkan states of the Tin Tin books.
I was surprised that Kate Winslet did this. I think she might have signed a contract to do a number of shows for Max. She was amazing in Mare of Easttown. That is what I would expect her to do.
I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it personally. I did see the satire in regard to how dictators create their own microcosms and have a propensity towards eccentric behaviour. I think it fell short with keeping things vague in regard to the country. They just say Central Europe but no one said it has to be a known Central European country; could’ve easily made up some tiny country tucked away within Central Europe. The ending was confusing and not a typical one seen for dictators.
This show sounds like such wasted potential. Dictatorships (when looked at from a distance) have such inherent dark comedy to explore (especially when juxtaposed with the reality of their citizens). Such a waste of a good, topical, and insightful premise.
Kate Winslet was the problem. Her star shines to brightly for her talent to be used in a show that isn't taking itself seriously. I struggled to get what the show was trying to tell me, what the story was or how Elena is crucial to the story. What is the fucking point of it all? They tried to do too much and what we got was a mess. I wish they chose a battle and died on that hill rather than the blandness this show turned out to be.
Yeah, if you think real life dictators, many of them were pretty unstable/paranoid/mentally unwell, but they were also usually intelligent, cunning and able to manipulate people. Like Stalin, for example, who had a number of quirks other had to follow; for example, he watched movies at his datcha and others had to watch with him, no matter how late, what sort of movies etc. But it is very understandable WHY people would do whatever Stalin wanted; they would literally be killed if they didn't and their families would be sent to gulag. And they knew it. Or, another example; Putin. It's pretty clear he's off the rails nowadays. He's paranoid, he lives in a bunker, has a mile long table, has had his own cooks and food when he travels for years so I assume it's even worse now etc. But again, everybody does his bidding. And it is understandable why. He wasn't always like this. He was legitimately clever, cunning, ruthless and capable. And he, of course, still retains some of those qualities + by now he has built a system that NEEDS him to survive. Nobody can replace him, if he falls, the system will fall and everyone who benefits from it. With Elena, I never understood how she got into power and how she retains it and if she even has any. She was just unstable and weird and out of touch. + the way Winslet played her did not help. :/
1:09 "How exactly did the show become such a flop?" Well, considering the first time I am hearing about it is on THIS youtube video (no offense intended xD) I can guess at least a few of the answers.
Reminds me also of the one season flop Kings. It tried to be the biblical story of King David, but set in a modern absolute monarchy and all the intrigue that entails. In the end you just asked yourself "who exactly was this made for?". It's not for the religious crowd, not for people into political intrigue and the first season just leaves too much open. And this was still when people had to watch it on "normal" TV so just kicking the plot cans down the road won't get people to watch it.
I think the issue there might have been one of medium. There have been many successful modern adaptations of old myths/stories. But they're usually theatrical productions, not drawn out TV shows. Imagine trying to make "Pygmalion", or "West Side Story" a TV show. The premise of "modern retelling" rarely has the fuel for such long-form content.
i cut and ran after episode 3 took me 4 attempts to finish it. Considering I've seen The Thick of It, Veep, Twenty Twelve, Black Books, Yes Minister many times I was hopeful, but nope
i can only join the refrain that i never heard of this show before your video. at first glance this looked like something from like 2015 or so. the first glaring problem is that they have two high-ranking regime positions who feel conflicted about the whole autocracy deal, which is just... utterly divorced from how real dictatorships function. you could have made this work with a purely fictional country, but by god make the bad guys actually act like oppressors actually act.
I think it was too European-coded for Americans to fully appreciate the references. Also, it was intended on being a satire, but our concept of the ridiculous is hard to separate from actual reality with the levels of insanity we see daily on social media alone. The satire would have to go into the stratosphere for levels of ridiculous which would make it unbelievable. Third, it was tonally unbalanced. Yes, it exhibited satire at times in a Death of Stalin way, but the dark elements it portrayed were almost at odds and heartbreakingly so to a point the satiric elements felt unbalanced. It was hard as a viewer to go back to a humorous from one episode to the next after certain characters' tragic ends (no spoilers but you probably know whom I'm referencing) or brutal visceral murders. It felt like laughing at a funeral. I did think it was beautifully shot, acted, and crafted though. The tone just didn't cohere, I think.
I'm Polish, so from a post-Soviet country. I had the opposite impression: it was very clear to me that the creators didn't know the realities of regimes like that enough to satirise them with nuance. It was very 'broad strokes, fantasy Eastern European quasi-regime seen through Western eyes'. The very fact that the main character is a woman - I'm sorry, but part of the ideology of regimes like that is that they're highly patriarchal in nature. A woman would be very unlikely to have the top job by the very nature of these ideologies. A power behind the throne - yes. A leader in her own right - very, very unlikely. It's a shame, because I love Kate Winslet and I was really looking forward to that show, but it felt like someone was trying to tell me a story about my region when it was clear they didn't know that much about it.
I think a good satire can be very poignant at times and not feel tonally at odds with itself. The best example I can come up with is Inglorious Basterds, which is a master class on satire of the World War II but also showing the evil of the actual Nazis when they were in power.
@@AW-uv3cbInitially I thought part of the satire and absurdity was the fact it was a woman in power. The idiosyncrasies of a tyrant woman. Maybe I gave it too much credit. It had potential and it fell flat.
I'm from Bulgaria... I've watched 40 years of corruption, regime changes and wannabe dictators. These writers have no idea what they are doing. This is just American writers trying to write on a topic they have no clue about.
Kate is literally my FAVORITE actress of all time because of her performances in 2 films: Eternal Sunshine and Revolutionary Road, but my god was this show terrible.
It wasn’t horrible, it had its moments. Thought they had a good premise which made the first few episodes good fun, but the development of the story into later episodes just became weaker and weaker. I would watch a second series though.
HBO loves to come up with great concepts they have no idea what to do with beyond half a season. They don’t even k ow how to conclude the first season to set up a second, because they don’t have any idea where to take the story. GOT was an exception cause they had a few seasons of material already written by someone smart. After that they cashed and burned spectacularly.
I agree w/your point about GoT, because when it became clear that the showrunners (Dan Weiss & David Benioff) were planning on rushing through the final seasons, in order to f*ck off & go make a Star Wars trilogy... HBO had a responsibility to instead say, "No." It should have been: "We thank you for your service these past 4 or 5 seasons... but no. Why don't YOU go ahead & leave, and we'll hire some different showrunners to continue the show in the quality & trajectory it's been on." But of course they didn't do that. 🤦🏻♀️🙄 Instead, they left one of the greatest shows in Tv history sitting in their laps & just gambled that it would all turn out ok. They rarely do their due diligence in making sure that the creatives of their shows are up to task anymore! If a show does amazing... it's only because they were fortunate to have hired good talent THAT time. lol The dice had rolled in their favor. But if it doesn't, well, it's yet another sign that they simply didn't care again. And I expect that sort of ineptitude from some place like Netflix... but HBO used to be much higher caliber than that. You never saw such laziness from them back in the day. What happened to GoT was proof of how far they had fallen. It's a shame.
What are you raving about ? HBO produced many amazingly written series in the past ? As if Game of Thrones was their first big hit ? HBO was known for the quality of its show before GoT
It seems like you've only watched GOT and then a few bad shows on HBO and that's it and thought that made you an expert lol, maybe give the Sopranos and the Wire a watch considering they're the two greatest shows of all time
@@kristinalfc5846"The Sopranos" and "The Wire" ended in 2007/2008. You might want to use examples that aren't 15+ years old. Maybe "Chernobyl" and "Barry"?
A lack of a proper world building does tragic things to your story. I never knew what they wanted to portray: a dictatorship? A liberal democracy? Where is Congress? Where is the opposition, how it is organized and how Kate Winslet deal with them? It never landed on me
Your analysis was impressive. I appreciated the end about how it's about America. I'd say, that has happened many times and was consistent with actual history. Would have made it worth watching if they criticized the state department. The FX show tyrant did that but lost the plot the second season
This is my opinion as an expert on authoritarianism: this is a a satire of the Ceausescu couple and their regime. Nicolae ceausescu and his wife Elena (sound familiar?) ceausescu were the cartoonishly malevolent, corrupt, and inept nominally communist leaders of the Romanian regime before massacring protesters and a subsequent lukewarm speech (sound familiar?) led to their demise. Their adherence to communism was questionable and often fascistic. They had 3 children. One of whom was a son who pursued a career in politics and another of whom was a daughter who, at least in the image I saw, would have looked almost identical to the chancellor from the show had she worn less makeup. Since the 1989 revolution, corruption has continued in Romania and Eastern Europe in general. Romanian politics has been dominated by a fascist party led by a man who used to work for ceausescu and the country’s social Democratic Party which is the legal descendant of the communist party that ceausescu led. This social Democratic Party has been accused of corruption, authoritarianism, connections to the former secret police, and has bestowed a state honor on the leader of the aforementioned fascist party. I hope I have at least removed some doubt about the world building of this show.
I am a sucker for fictional countries in movies, so I was quite excited for this miniseries. But alas, not much was explained in terms of the country's culture (apart from... a beet festival) and the context of the regime's past and future are pretty vague. It is a shame, it was promising little series. Kate Winslet nailed the role as always though!
I loved this show. Having grown up under an authoritarian regime, where the same man has ruled my country for the past 40 years, I’m familiar with the absence of press freedom and the constant stream of scandals involving mismanagement of funds. This show left me initially puzzled-was it a comedy or a political thriller? But then I realized it wasn’t just about politics; it was about love-specifically, the obsessive love a leader might have for their country, contrasted against their duty to adhere to the broader world order. After years of ruling her nation, Elena succumbed to the temptation of craving more love from her people, more attention, and better ratings. The only way to achieve this was by creating the illusion of fighting a common enemy. Caporal Zuback symbolizes the people-the masses, the voters-who are driven by idealistic, wishful thinking, so much so that they desperately cling to leaders who treat them poorly but sell them a nationalist dream. I’ve lived through everything depicted in the show: witnessing our regime being challenged, and civil unrest, only for the same dictator to return with empty promises.
Ever get the feeling the reason they can't commit to criticizing power..is because the show runners WISH they had utter power and control and the ability to get revenge on anyone? This isn't a warning, it's a fantasy.
I'd say it was decent. My wife and I enjoyed it. Kate Winslet was very funny - sort of an Eastern European Imelda Marcos vibe. Although apples and oranges, was it nearly as good as Succession? No definitely not.
I feel that the writers and producers had to make the topic of a "Regime" and what a regime is with superficial with a wink and a nod simply because if they went any deeper then that when talking about the inner workings of what a regime is then they would have to overly address the Geopolitical elephant in the room that is the United States of America.
I'm not gonna lie, this regime sounds like Turkey. If only Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was Kate Winslet... ps: Because Erdoğan doesn't know what he wants too, much like the writers of this show. lol
If you want political satire about an abstract dictatorship, watch Land of the Blind. It satirizes all dictatorships of 20th century, and is very witty.
I feel like if this had been The Beautician and the Beast but played as satire? Maybe it would’ve been something. TBATB is movie from the late-90s and it follows a sassy broad from New York (played by Fran Drescher from The Nanny) who comes to a vaguely Eastern European country as a tutor/governess. The country’s dictator (Timothy Dalton) is very Stalin-coded - military attire, big bushy mustache, pre-revolution peasant class, oppression. But she’s gonna change him so he’s more appealing to Western Europe and American sensibilities. Except it’s played as a traditional rom-com. She gets him to dress casually and shave his mustache, learn the serfs’ names, allows the youth resistance out of the dungeon, and accidentally starts a union. Such a fucking bizarre post-USSR fever dream.
Same way Succession was such an overrated show that fails to show the real power billionaires wield. Just a bunch of rich people fighting over perks and position in a dying company
succession is more like a character study, power dynamics, relationships, greed. i dont think it was supposed to be about how billionaires control the world lol.
Kate Winslet was awesome in it. Wouldn’t be surprised if this ages very well over more time. I think people are burned out currently on the political climate. Perhaps in 50 years it’ll surely get better….SURELY.
Reminds me of the way ubisoft (and big video game studios in general) writes politics, or rather doesn't, they dress everything up with highly charged political symbols and references but stop short of actually saying anything for fear of actually taking a side or having a position on anything.
its not complicated why it failed, just like 98% of the shows and movies in the past 10 years it was an inch deep in the actual plot and instead they filled the season with flashing shocking scenes. it wasnt the regime but adventures of a dictator. few scenes of how horrible these ppl are and what they do, basically like most movies and shows these days a beautiful nothing
Idk what yall are talking about. I am a history teacher and majored in Political Science. This show was funny and had great themes. It was pleasing to see references to real world history but in a funny and dramatized way. The only problem was that they rushed an ending. The show is still quoted by my family regularly. What a shame this show wasn't given time.
Looking at his argument on why this doesn't make sense as a regime up to the 19:45 mark on this segment, I just figured out that this is a regime that completely function as the United States, our politicians do what Elena does with social media here and some still have a significantly high approval rating considering thier misleadership. Ultimately, this wouldn't make sense to Europeans because you don't deal with this type of propaganda at you corner of the world.
The writing was good, the acting was good, the production design was good; it just always felt like less than the sum of it's parts. I had forgotten that I even watched taht show until I was suggested this video
I was pretty disappointed with this show. It really intrigued me at first. It looked like it was going to be smart, dark, and funny. With a bit of subversion thrown in, of course. Mostly the story just meandered. And I found these odd characters less and less likeable as it went on. Blame it on the writing, perhaps? I just kept thinking, this should be good!
Satire needs a target. And the best satires attack that target repeatedly. I caught that this was not a comedy, not a satire. Just an amalgamation by committee of timid writers. This show had no balls.
if i had to guess, i think the series was suppose to be a satire of the fall of the soviet union and the country's transition from a dictatorship to a "democracy". which could've been great if well executed. but it seems like the writers didn't really know where they wanted to take the story and how they wanted to portray the politics so they kept it very vague. i think they were going for something mysterious that keeps you guessing but it just ended up becoming confusing. films like dr. strangelove and the death of stalin handle these sorts of comedic ideas far better than this series does. the worst part about the show is that you don't really know what it's trying to say and by the end you just feel like all of it was pretty pointless.
The Regime would have worked better if it were a straight-up spoof of the last years of Enver Hoxha's regime, but with Kate Winslet as a female version.
I quite liked the show at first. But a compelling story line never emerged and I forgot to keep watching after a few episodes. It felt like all premise, and premise isn't enough without an interesting story. Performances were good. Succession was a thin on narrative as well, but it had a large cast of messy and relatable personalities interacting in juicy combinations and with a lot of humor. It was Arrested Development played a little more straight, a bit of a guilty pleasure soap opera. In comparison, The Regime had very few main characters, mostly cold and distant. The setting didn't seem very clearly defined as to how fantastical the rules of the storytelling universe were playing by. It was funny at times but nowhere near enough to get by as a comedy. It's a shame it didn't work out.
So many people here keep on calling it boring due to them not being too interested in politics. I'm a 28 year old man that is not one that is interested I never was bored with it at all. Heck, I never even knew it was supposed to be a satire or anything, nor did i see it as duch. In fact as was genuinely interested in seeing how this whole thing goes and was captivated in it more than I was with others that came a bit before and after it like that despicable disaster that was that True Detective revival. But like that show, the ending for this really soured my opinion of the show as it ended up making that all that duo was trying to do completely pointless by committing to Elena's selfishness at the end and then some. It was what lead me to not want to rewatch it yet, again unlike Night Country, it wasn't something I regretted watching at all in the first place
I watched 2 maybe 3 episodes. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t terrible but with all the other stuff I was watching and was on my watch list it just was worth my time.
Not everyone is aware of or interested in politics - especially European politics. Vernham may be a send up of Georgia Meloni, or the whole cobalt sub-plot could be about the hold Russia's oil fields has on democratic Europe. With all her love talk toward her people, her egotism, and germaphobia, she may be Trump, especially her ongoing attempts to please her abusive dead daddy. Some critics have labeled the series scattered and pointless, but I think the menage a trois between this nameless country, China, and US reveals the toxicity of today's geopolitics, especially the colonialism of both China and the US. The series is very clear about how common people suffer under dictators... it doesn't matter if the dear leader is Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Xi Xing Peng, Tyyip Erdogan, Mohammad bin Salman, or an amalgam of them, it stands as a clear warning against authoritarianism, and it was extremely funny. At least as funny as "Don't Look Up." I think it will become a cult classic over time.
Rome was a show I couldn't stop watching and then they killed it. As for this regime show I got a couple of episodes in and I had no idea what it was about. I also didn't care how important the main character thinks she is, if you don't build up to the viewer understanding it, then it doesn't matter.
The biggest problem with this show is the same problem as all those young adult dystopia novels had: the writers fundamentally don't understand politics outside of a modern western framework.
They've never experienced anything like a dictatorship, they can't grasp the concept of non-democratic politics, palace intrigue, or hard power. They have only known soft power and our modern understanding of popular sovereignty, which is totally antithetical to what they're trying to make.
That's why you have a supposed dictatorship that reads indistinguishable from a parliamentary democracy and dissident elites talking about a "constitution" and not simply seizing power by capturing enough counter-elites.
Fuck that’s a perfect breakdown.very well put
What a delight to discover an intelligent take. Cheers.
I disagree, I explained in a comment why but having grown up in an authoritarian regime, I think it was well written but this is what happens when you look at power from the POV of powerful people. They only see soft power, they're too out of touch; they don't see the hungry, homeless, poor people, the bad roads or poor infrastructure because they live in a comfortable capsule, private jets and palaces. Of course we can't see the other side because the story is told from Elena's point of view.
These are exactly my thoughts when somebody asks me, a Russian, "why we just don't go to the streets and protest".
Bet you've never lived in an autocracy, my boy... never.
@mantolinez exactly. People dont understand that in non-liberal countries, power exists independent of the will of the people. And I wouldn't even put mordern Russia all that high on the list of authoritarian countries. What's portrayed in this show is more like an ex-soviet state like Romania
The shows inability to define the regime I think is a major misstep, it seems to shifts between wanting a full-blown dictatorship and an illiberal democracy, having the regime be a story about democratic backsliding could have been an interesting perspective with Elena slowly turning into a dictator but the show seemed unwilling to go that direction to its own detriment
wait, isnt that exactly what they went for? For me, it was too on the nose and lacked subtlety, but more importantly, the writing was shit
@@obeshy that may have been what they attempted but but as you said do to shit writing they kinda failed at it, governments like Hungary and Turkey, illiberal Democracies, that have authoritarian characteristics are very different from nations who were apart of the Warsaw pact and the show kinda kept flip flopping between these two stances
I kinda feel like they stayed away from that because a woman was the lead and they didn’t want to portray her as totally evil. They should’ve just not made the show
She was always a dictator, it was always a dictatorship.
I think they were going for a “Death of Stalin” thing but it just didn’t land that way.
This entire show wants to be an Armando Ianucci project and it is not. I bet he passed
He was working on the stage adaptation of dr strange love with steve Coogan. Which is heading to the bord gais energy theatre and then the west end.
there doing that cool?.
The comedy in the death of stalin is amazing
@typie34 what's funny is just how accurate it was, as a historian my only problem with the movie (and this is a small problem and not a true inaccuracy) is that the events in the movie were months apart while the film gives the impression of just a few weeks at most, which I think is just a constraint of putting eveything in single film, still a 10/10 film
The show had no point. It was too vague to count as satire
I think there was a point in the end. That as long as you do as the US wants you get to stay in power. Which is true. But in general the show was total garbage.
@@ImperialMJG I believe we can all think of a lot of examples of countries whose governments have stayed power for decades despite not complying with U.S. interests
@@RatherCrunchyMuffin I can count countless examples of countries that have not, or where US have tried.
@@ImperialMJGyes, but you’re missing the point. As long as there are examples of countries that stayed in power without complying with the US, you’re original argument that you need to comply to stay in power becomes untrue or at least a weak argument.
@@ImperialMJG I think it was she would do anything to stay in power. It wasn't about the country/culture or her character or virtue as important, it was just her being the leader & staying in power.
It committed the cardinal sin.
Being boring.
Funny. That's what Night Country was more guilty of doing more and then some. At least this got to its point quicker.
A movie can be great
a movie can be good
A movie can be ehh okay
But *never* be boring, *ever*
I remember being so excited for this show, then watched a single episode and was immediately put off. You have to actually understand historical and contemporary politics in order to write about it. Everything they're trying to comment on felt either slightly off-the-mark, oversimplified, or just...wrong. The show feels like what would happen if chatGPT processed through a bunch of real-life data about autocratic regimes, and produced a off-putting surface level mashup of all the data, because that's all a machine is capable of doing.
Excellent analysis.
They just didn't have any knowledge to tell such this story, just a vague premise.
I wanted Gillian Anderson as a ruthless, smart female dictator leading her country out of Communism. Instead we got... weird personal wellness nonsense.
And no Gillian Anderson.
That's probably exactly how it was written
It feels like Civil War, which was another political "thriller" that didn't really seem to have any message behind it.
Xz
As someone who was born and lived in the Soviet Union, this show seemed to me like it was created by someone(s) who never really experienced the actual reality of living under a dictatorial regime. It's like someone who has never tasted sugar but is trying to describe what one experiences when tasting sugar. Yes, there were some somewhat accurate depictions of concepts but overall it was just neither here nor there. An oxymoron of sorts.
Crazy what happens when you have writers who really REALLY want to live like this and the reality and historical content that just spits in their faces....so in a way this kinda show is expected lol
it was like Death of Stalin but without any specific type of regime it was meant to represent it felt hollow. They could have made a show about Ceausescu's Romania which was such a shitshow it would have been a great satire.
"I need to talk to you... get over here. Make it look it's part of the thing.'
Or the movie land of the blind. Very similar.
A romanian desth of stalin would def work
It was soooo trying to be Stalin! Great call, felt the same way.
I didn’t know who they were trying to impersonate. Part of me thought it was an ‘if Marine Le Pen’ gained power. Other part of me thought it was meant to be Orban or Putin.. it really didn’t make any coherent sense
The funniest part of this show was that Kate had to so adamantly announce in interviews that it was, in fact, a comedy... followed by a look of utter desperation and a sincere plea for people to actually watch it. It would be like a comedian announcing, "FUNNY JOKE COMING UP RIGHT HERE EVERYONE, prepare yourselves to laugh... please... I am about to do comedy, and although it may not be immediately recognized as such, I assure you that it is funny." 😐
A good comedian will tell a joke that bombs then insult the audience for not understanding it. Not beg the audience for a laugh. Good point.
A good comedian would just be funny
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116A good comedian would make sure that their insults to the audience are funnier than the joke they just bombed. An unfunny one will just bomb at that too
After listening to all the points you’ve mentioned, I would say that this series suffers from the “don’t want to be” syndrome. They didn’t want to be directly compared to real regimes or dictatorships, and they didn’t want people to associate the regime with systems like monarchies. These are all things I remember, and both the actors and producers have also pointed them out in several interviews. In itself, there’s no problem with this; the problem arises when you try so hard to avoid comparisons that you end up putting more effort into not being like others than into being yourself and saying something consistent that captures the audience’s interest. A shame, really, because as you said, they had all the elements to succeed: cast, budget, writers, and producers.
I was highly anticipating this show, but I got bored after two or three episodes. I will always sign up for anything starring Kate Winslet, and I think this series had potential.
By the way, I also don’t understand why people referred to the series as a comedy 😂😂😂
Veep did it successfully though
Very true. We get compelling dystopian world building all the time that ends up reflecting society
There it is! Right there... it was boring. I too stopped after 2 episodes. Also... no one to root for. And... no humor, everything fell flat. It committed the ultimate television sin - it wasted my time.
@@GS-vb3zn
I barely made it through E1.
Kate Winslet is one of this generation's greatest actresses, but the writing is so meh even she couldn't save the show.
The writers obviously have no idea what a regime like this is, how people in power get power, how they stay in power and how they lose that power. It's just a vague mess and it doesn't have much to say. But at least the costumes are nice.
its ironic they tried to write this show like it was a completely unnamed country, because the thing I think about when I think of the USSR, Maoist China, Nazi Germany etc. is that they just sprang out of nowhere and that history had no part in forming them....lol
skipping the history of this 'young republic' skips the most important part of the whole story
@@carsen1GTFO In order to have a political satyre you need to have context. For example. If you look up for song "Dobře míněná rada" or "Jdi domů Ivane" here on youtube you get up beat song about guy named Ivan who should go home. Reason is that girls here do not like him and back home his girl Natasha is waiting for him, but may get tired and would chose rather Voloda. But video you would see during this song would probably be made out of pictures from year 1968 when my country was occupy by her former ally USSR.
Reason for this is that Ivan is stand in for Russians and author of the song is telling them to go back home and never to return. Simple, yet effective message ensure that this song becomes wildly known and after our hockey team beaten USSR at the World Championships in Stockholm 1969 this song was sung through whole country. But without the context it is just catchy song from 1960s era.
I was so disappointed in this. The creator of it, Will Tracy, wrote excellent episodes of Succession especially the famed season 2 episode “Tern Haven” so I had high hopes and his involvement was why I was interested in watching it in the first place.
Succession is ultimately Wealth Porn and it succeeds because the characters were interesting and presented sympathetically, despite everyone actually being terrible. There's no actual morality to it. It's ultimately about... nothing. No surprise this failed.
They really should have a political scientist on payroll.
Or a historian? A writer?
Wait, this was this year, I've never heard of this show so I assumed it was from the 2010s or something.
Ngl when I watched this. It felt like a half bake 2010s show you would watch on NBC. 😂
I remember seeing ads for it months ago but I forgot about it until I saw this pop up in my feed
No lmao it came out very recently
It probably would have make more sense if it was a monarchy
Could've just been modern day france, uk, or germany
@@jjhh320 since when are france and germany monarchies lmao
@@doyleharken3477 pretty sure they are just being ridiculous and implying those countries have broken down and likely some xenophobia involved therein.
Most dictatorships are "democracies".
Or the county being set elsewhere instead of central europe, like somewhere in latin america or middle east. Places where pro US authoritarian regimes are common
Imagine the vast amount of fictional history and creative worldbuilding the writers can create
>European Nation.
>USA supplied cars.
Ok.
Interesting enough this is a minor thing since Americans are mentioned to be involved in establishment of this "regime"
Winslet performs her character like Drew Barrymore playing Margaret Thatcher.
I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, so I looked up MT to remind me what she looked like, and a few quotes.
I can picture Barrymore as her (It took a few minutes), moreso after reading this quote, “Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day you've had everything to do and you've done it.”, but full disclosure, she turns back into long haired hippy Drew with other quotes 😆
My GOODNESS! Quite a few of her quotes did not age well! 😅
The thing is, satire is supposed to be funny. This show wasn't. It was just boring.
It never really was. You just wasn't into political stuff. I'm not either but I at least was able to get enthralled with how the whole thing went.
It failed because it was absolutely stupid. Kates character is extremly boring. And her "insanity" being carried in a box because she is afraid of something which I was to bored to understand cause it looked so idiotic. There is no satire. A good dictator series is "Tyrant". Thats how you make a real dictator show. And they could have done it with a country set in Europe...but without the satire cause its just stupid. Also give the country a name.
I really wanted to like that show, but I honestly forgot about it after watching it. By the next week it was a complete afterthought unfortunately
The show had a choice make a dark drama about a regime, or make a comedy about USSR or its satellite states. Which would have been comedy gold bunkers everywhere, a giant parliament building which is too big to be actually useful. Poorly made underground railways. Grandma’s snitching on everyone, a weird obsession over jeans.
That would have been hilarious.
Ha ha
USSR still Living rent in your head I see
I got bored with the first episode. Almost painful to watch.
Same.
Yep. Watched the first. Started the second, but couldn't force myself to even get halfway through.
Reaaaaaallllyyyyy boring 😂
Yeah, and the characters have no charisma at all. Kate Winslet is an amazing actress, but her character is just insufferable.
I watch twenty minutes of it and fell asleep
It started well and I do think it has some sharp writing, they just couldn’t stick the landing and settle on how to end the plot imo
I agree 🫤 Satire can be really hard to do.... and I felt like they lost the plot as well.
tbh not sure if satire was the best way to go for it
Have you watched the Death Of Stalin?
@@clarapilier its good but im saying satire is much harder than doing something that would be taken more seriously
@@clarapilier Yeah but the reason Death of Stalin works is because it's satirizing a real regime and real people in it. The Regime falls apart 'cause it's satirizing a vague idea of something. If it was a political drama instead, I think it might have done better.
“Are we the baddies?” I’d say it is a great lense under which to examine the theme, as so many have successfully done before. “Satirising the fasho’s” isn’t exactly an untapped mine
What death of Stalin does right is show sycophants fighting for control after a powerful dictator dies. Their incompetence makes sense because they are all incompetent.
An dictator doesn't make sense if there underlings and support base think it's easy to undermine them
It was too self-indulgent. It was like a pointless, meandering Wes Anderson rip-off. What a waste of resources and talent of what could have been a cogent, scathing satire of authoritarian regimes and the neoliberal corporations that fund them.
The show could have done with much tighter theming - ultimately to me it was a show about toxic love and hit really close to home. The politics and plots around that just felt like heavy handed set dressing. Which was odd, because I was expecting Death of Stalin political satire.
Winslet was fantastic, and her accent was just hilarious. Zubak embodied the worst of toxic masculinity which was extremely uncomfortable (in the good way). The set, costumes and music was fantastic.
Ultimately the show feels a lot like modern media - its "a good first draft" with good ideas but needed a lot more work to be something great.
Yeah... not funny enough to work as a comedy, not relevant enough to be a satire, and too silly to be a drama. I can 100% see why Winslet took the part though. What a role, and she did a great job.
It was boring and poorly paced.
It looked great, but it was hard to care about any of the characters.
I couldn’t keep up with the vast majority of the characters in this even with captions. I would forget who was working for her or against her. It was beautifully shot, but that’s about it.
They should have made Biopic of Causescu and his wife Elena instead of this.
I enjoyed it, but it was very obvious the show was rushed with the last few episodes, they closed many build up sub plots with no sense
And one more thing I forgot: there are seemingly Christmas tree-like decorations everywhere in the show. This seems to be a subtle nod to how the ceausescu couple were executed on Christmas Day.
It was like they tried to combine the Alexandre Desplat soundtrack and colour scheme of The Grand Budapest Hotel with the political satire of the Death of Stalin and created something not as good as either. It felt like a very dated portrayal of an “Eastern” post Soviet Europe by Western writers and producers who didn’t seem that well versed in the history and culture of the region. It reminded me of the fictional state Ruritania of The Prisoner of Zenda or the fictionalised Balkan states of the Tin Tin books.
I was surprised that Kate Winslet did this. I think she might have signed a contract to do a number of shows for Max. She was amazing in Mare of Easttown. That is what I would expect her to do.
I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it personally. I did see the satire in regard to how dictators create their own microcosms and have a propensity towards eccentric behaviour. I think it fell short with keeping things vague in regard to the country. They just say Central Europe but no one said it has to be a known Central European country; could’ve easily made up some tiny country tucked away within Central Europe. The ending was confusing and not a typical one seen for dictators.
This show sounds like such wasted potential. Dictatorships (when looked at from a distance) have such inherent dark comedy to explore (especially when juxtaposed with the reality of their citizens). Such a waste of a good, topical, and insightful premise.
Kate Winslet was the problem. Her star shines to brightly for her talent to be used in a show that isn't taking itself seriously. I struggled to get what the show was trying to tell me, what the story was or how Elena is crucial to the story. What is the fucking point of it all? They tried to do too much and what we got was a mess. I wish they chose a battle and died on that hill rather than the blandness this show turned out to be.
Yeah, if you think real life dictators, many of them were pretty unstable/paranoid/mentally unwell, but they were also usually intelligent, cunning and able to manipulate people. Like Stalin, for example, who had a number of quirks other had to follow; for example, he watched movies at his datcha and others had to watch with him, no matter how late, what sort of movies etc. But it is very understandable WHY people would do whatever Stalin wanted; they would literally be killed if they didn't and their families would be sent to gulag. And they knew it.
Or, another example; Putin. It's pretty clear he's off the rails nowadays. He's paranoid, he lives in a bunker, has a mile long table, has had his own cooks and food when he travels for years so I assume it's even worse now etc. But again, everybody does his bidding. And it is understandable why. He wasn't always like this. He was legitimately clever, cunning, ruthless and capable. And he, of course, still retains some of those qualities + by now he has built a system that NEEDS him to survive. Nobody can replace him, if he falls, the system will fall and everyone who benefits from it.
With Elena, I never understood how she got into power and how she retains it and if she even has any. She was just unstable and weird and out of touch. + the way Winslet played her did not help. :/
1:09 "How exactly did the show become such a flop?" Well, considering the first time I am hearing about it is on THIS youtube video (no offense intended xD) I can guess at least a few of the answers.
Reminds me also of the one season flop Kings. It tried to be the biblical story of King David, but set in a modern absolute monarchy and all the intrigue that entails.
In the end you just asked yourself "who exactly was this made for?". It's not for the religious crowd, not for people into political intrigue and the first season just leaves too much open. And this was still when people had to watch it on "normal" TV so just kicking the plot cans down the road won't get people to watch it.
Kings sounds like such an interesting idea, I’ve never seen it. Shame it wasn’t good.
I think the issue there might have been one of medium. There have been many successful modern adaptations of old myths/stories. But they're usually theatrical productions, not drawn out TV shows. Imagine trying to make "Pygmalion", or "West Side Story" a TV show.
The premise of "modern retelling" rarely has the fuel for such long-form content.
i wanted to like this because of kate winslet she is a goat but it was a struggle
And evidently it was released 5 years ago in your timeline…… theres no way you can watch it millions of times
i cut and ran after episode 3 took me 4 attempts to finish it.
Considering I've seen The Thick of It, Veep, Twenty Twelve, Black Books, Yes Minister many times I was hopeful, but nope
i can only join the refrain that i never heard of this show before your video. at first glance this looked like something from like 2015 or so. the first glaring problem is that they have two high-ranking regime positions who feel conflicted about the whole autocracy deal, which is just... utterly divorced from how real dictatorships function. you could have made this work with a purely fictional country, but by god make the bad guys actually act like oppressors actually act.
I think it was too European-coded for Americans to fully appreciate the references.
Also, it was intended on being a satire, but our concept of the ridiculous is hard to separate from actual reality with the levels of insanity we see daily on social media alone. The satire would have to go into the stratosphere for levels of ridiculous which would make it unbelievable.
Third, it was tonally unbalanced. Yes, it exhibited satire at times in a Death of Stalin way, but the dark elements it portrayed were almost at odds and heartbreakingly so to a point the satiric elements felt unbalanced. It was hard as a viewer to go back to a humorous from one episode to the next after certain characters' tragic ends (no spoilers but you probably know whom I'm referencing) or brutal visceral murders. It felt like laughing at a funeral.
I did think it was beautifully shot, acted, and crafted though. The tone just didn't cohere, I think.
I'm Polish, so from a post-Soviet country. I had the opposite impression: it was very clear to me that the creators didn't know the realities of regimes like that enough to satirise them with nuance. It was very 'broad strokes, fantasy Eastern European quasi-regime seen through Western eyes'. The very fact that the main character is a woman - I'm sorry, but part of the ideology of regimes like that is that they're highly patriarchal in nature. A woman would be very unlikely to have the top job by the very nature of these ideologies. A power behind the throne - yes. A leader in her own right - very, very unlikely. It's a shame, because I love Kate Winslet and I was really looking forward to that show, but it felt like someone was trying to tell me a story about my region when it was clear they didn't know that much about it.
I think a good satire can be very poignant at times and not feel tonally at odds with itself. The best example I can come up with is Inglorious Basterds, which is a master class on satire of the World War II but also showing the evil of the actual Nazis when they were in power.
@@AW-uv3cbInitially I thought part of the satire and absurdity was the fact it was a woman in power. The idiosyncrasies of a tyrant woman. Maybe I gave it too much credit. It had potential and it fell flat.
I'm from Bulgaria... I've watched 40 years of corruption, regime changes and wannabe dictators. These writers have no idea what they are doing. This is just American writers trying to write on a topic they have no clue about.
@@KatAdVictoriam no potential
Kate is literally my FAVORITE actress of all time because of her performances in 2 films: Eternal Sunshine and Revolutionary Road, but my god was this show terrible.
It wasn’t horrible, it had its moments. Thought they had a good premise which made the first few episodes good fun, but the development of the story into later episodes just became weaker and weaker. I would watch a second series though.
HBO loves to come up with great concepts they have no idea what to do with beyond half a season. They don’t even k ow how to conclude the first season to set up a second, because they don’t have any idea where to take the story. GOT was an exception cause they had a few seasons of material already written by someone smart. After that they cashed and burned spectacularly.
I agree w/your point about GoT, because when it became clear that the showrunners (Dan Weiss & David Benioff) were planning on rushing through the final seasons, in order to f*ck off & go make a Star Wars trilogy...
HBO had a responsibility to instead say, "No."
It should have been: "We thank you for your service these past 4 or 5 seasons... but no. Why don't YOU go ahead & leave, and we'll hire some different showrunners to continue the show in the quality & trajectory it's been on."
But of course they didn't do that. 🤦🏻♀️🙄
Instead, they left one of the greatest shows in Tv history sitting in their laps & just gambled that it would all turn out ok. They rarely do their due diligence in making sure that the creatives of their shows are up to task anymore! If a show does amazing... it's only because they were fortunate to have hired good talent THAT time. lol The dice had rolled in their favor.
But if it doesn't, well, it's yet another sign that they simply didn't care again. And I expect that sort of ineptitude from some place like Netflix... but HBO used to be much higher caliber than that. You never saw such laziness from them back in the day. What happened to GoT was proof of how far they had fallen. It's a shame.
What are you raving about ? HBO produced many amazingly written series in the past ?
As if Game of Thrones was their first big hit ? HBO was known for the quality of its show before GoT
What about Sopranos lol?
It seems like you've only watched GOT and then a few bad shows on HBO and that's it and thought that made you an expert lol, maybe give the Sopranos and the Wire a watch considering they're the two greatest shows of all time
@@kristinalfc5846"The Sopranos" and "The Wire" ended in 2007/2008. You might want to use examples that aren't 15+ years old. Maybe "Chernobyl" and "Barry"?
A lack of a proper world building does tragic things to your story. I never knew what they wanted to portray: a dictatorship? A liberal democracy?
Where is Congress?
Where is the opposition, how it is organized and how Kate Winslet deal with them?
It never landed on me
Your analysis was impressive. I appreciated the end about how it's about America. I'd say, that has happened many times and was consistent with actual history. Would have made it worth watching if they criticized the state department. The FX show tyrant did that but lost the plot the second season
The show couldn’t decide what it wanted to be and I think maybe it was trying to hard to mirror too many real world cases!
This is my opinion as an expert on authoritarianism: this is a a satire of the Ceausescu couple and their regime. Nicolae ceausescu and his wife Elena (sound familiar?) ceausescu were the cartoonishly malevolent, corrupt, and inept nominally communist leaders of the Romanian regime before massacring protesters and a subsequent lukewarm speech (sound familiar?) led to their demise. Their adherence to communism was questionable and often fascistic. They had 3 children. One of whom was a son who pursued a career in politics and another of whom was a daughter who, at least in the image I saw, would have looked almost identical to the chancellor from the show had she worn less makeup. Since the 1989 revolution, corruption has continued in Romania and Eastern Europe in general. Romanian politics has been dominated by a fascist party led by a man who used to work for ceausescu and the country’s social Democratic Party which is the legal descendant of the communist party that ceausescu led. This social Democratic Party has been accused of corruption, authoritarianism, connections to the former secret police, and has bestowed a state honor on the leader of the aforementioned fascist party. I hope I have at least removed some doubt about the world building of this show.
I am a sucker for fictional countries in movies, so I was quite excited for this miniseries. But alas, not much was explained in terms of the country's culture (apart from... a beet festival) and the context of the regime's past and future are pretty vague. It is a shame, it was promising little series. Kate Winslet nailed the role as always though!
Daft. The atmosphere of a comedy without jokes. Confusing. Forgettable.
Wait this failed? With the amount of ppl (females) praising Kate's character as a slay queen and girl boss, I thought it was a hit.
I loved this show. Having grown up under an authoritarian regime, where the same man has ruled my country for the past 40 years, I’m familiar with the absence of press freedom and the constant stream of scandals involving mismanagement of funds. This show left me initially puzzled-was it a comedy or a political thriller? But then I realized it wasn’t just about politics; it was about love-specifically, the obsessive love a leader might have for their country, contrasted against their duty to adhere to the broader world order. After years of ruling her nation, Elena succumbed to the temptation of craving more love from her people, more attention, and better ratings. The only way to achieve this was by creating the illusion of fighting a common enemy. Caporal Zuback symbolizes the people-the masses, the voters-who are driven by idealistic, wishful thinking, so much so that they desperately cling to leaders who treat them poorly but sell them a nationalist dream. I’ve lived through everything depicted in the show: witnessing our regime being challenged, and civil unrest, only for the same dictator to return with empty promises.
Ever get the feeling the reason they can't commit to criticizing power..is because the show runners WISH they had utter power and control and the ability to get revenge on anyone? This isn't a warning, it's a fantasy.
Bingo
I'd say it was decent. My wife and I enjoyed it. Kate Winslet was very funny - sort of an Eastern European Imelda Marcos vibe. Although apples and oranges, was it nearly as good as Succession? No definitely not.
Somehow this didnt feel like a satire for my country.this did feel real
They tried to catch lightning in a bottle again but there is only one Selina Meyers & only one VEEP
I remember seeing a promo and thinking "maybe cool" and then never watching it.
I feel that the writers and producers had to make the topic of a "Regime" and what a regime is with superficial with a wink and a nod simply because if they went any deeper then that when talking about the inner workings of what a regime is then they would have to overly address the Geopolitical elephant in the room that is the United States of America.
I'm not gonna lie, this regime sounds like Turkey. If only Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was Kate Winslet...
ps: Because Erdoğan doesn't know what he wants too, much like the writers of this show. lol
If you want political satire about an abstract dictatorship, watch Land of the Blind. It satirizes all dictatorships of 20th century, and is very witty.
This show had a lot of potential. I feel like it could’ve been like the great.
I feel like if this had been The Beautician and the Beast but played as satire? Maybe it would’ve been something.
TBATB is movie from the late-90s and it follows a sassy broad from New York (played by Fran Drescher from The Nanny) who comes to a vaguely Eastern European country as a tutor/governess. The country’s dictator (Timothy Dalton) is very Stalin-coded - military attire, big bushy mustache, pre-revolution peasant class, oppression. But she’s gonna change him so he’s more appealing to Western Europe and American sensibilities. Except it’s played as a traditional rom-com. She gets him to dress casually and shave his mustache, learn the serfs’ names, allows the youth resistance out of the dungeon, and accidentally starts a union. Such a fucking bizarre post-USSR fever dream.
Same way Succession was such an overrated show that fails to show the real power billionaires wield. Just a bunch of rich people fighting over perks and position in a dying company
succession is more like a character study, power dynamics, relationships, greed. i dont think it was supposed to be about how billionaires control the world lol.
Thanks for the analysis. Helps me to und why I struggled with the show (only made it the first few episodes)
Kate Winslet was awesome in it. Wouldn’t be surprised if this ages very well over more time. I think people are burned out currently on the political climate. Perhaps in 50 years it’ll surely get better….SURELY.
50 years? Everyone will have forgotten about about it by then. Though I really like the theory of the show, just needed deeper writing
Reminds me of the way ubisoft (and big video game studios in general) writes politics, or rather doesn't, they dress everything up with highly charged political symbols and references but stop short of actually saying anything for fear of actually taking a side or having a position on anything.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Regime and watched the entire season in one day😊 it was quite humorous and interesting.
Bc this show was so deserving of criticism maybe it doesn't deserve 28 min, more like 12-15. But I'll give it a try!
its not complicated why it failed, just like 98% of the shows and movies in the past 10 years it was an inch deep in the actual plot and instead they filled the season with flashing shocking scenes. it wasnt the regime but adventures of a dictator. few scenes of how horrible these ppl are and what they do, basically like most movies and shows these days a beautiful nothing
I loved this show. But yea the writing started off strong and then en.
Comedy?
Idk what yall are talking about. I am a history teacher and majored in Political Science. This show was funny and had great themes. It was pleasing to see references to real world history but in a funny and dramatized way. The only problem was that they rushed an ending. The show is still quoted by my family regularly. What a shame this show wasn't given time.
Looking at his argument on why this doesn't make sense as a regime up to the 19:45 mark on this segment, I just figured out that this is a regime that completely function as the United States, our politicians do what Elena does with social media here and some still have a significantly high approval rating considering thier misleadership. Ultimately, this wouldn't make sense to Europeans because you don't deal with this type of propaganda at you corner of the world.
The writing was good, the acting was good, the production design was good; it just always felt like less than the sum of it's parts. I had forgotten that I even watched taht show until I was suggested this video
I was pretty disappointed with this show. It really intrigued me at first. It looked like it was going to be smart, dark, and funny. With a bit of subversion thrown in, of course. Mostly the story just meandered. And I found these odd characters less and less likeable as it went on. Blame it on the writing, perhaps? I just kept thinking, this should be good!
I forgot this was a thing, I vaguely remember it being advertised/talked about but then nothing.
I do remember seeing trailers for this and it looked good, but then the world seemed to forget about it too.
Satire needs a target. And the best satires attack that target repeatedly. I caught that this was not a comedy, not a satire. Just an amalgamation by committee of timid writers. This show had no balls.
Just interested why not give them European accent’s if it’s meant to be some Europe dictatorship .Why do they all have. posh British accents.
What continent do you think Britain belongs to?
if i had to guess, i think the series was suppose to be a satire of the fall of the soviet union and the country's transition from a dictatorship to a "democracy". which could've been great if well executed. but it seems like the writers didn't really know where they wanted to take the story and how they wanted to portray the politics so they kept it very vague. i think they were going for something mysterious that keeps you guessing but it just ended up becoming confusing. films like dr. strangelove and the death of stalin handle these sorts of comedic ideas far better than this series does. the worst part about the show is that you don't really know what it's trying to say and by the end you just feel like all of it was pretty pointless.
I couldn't handle her accent. I kept waiting for her to imitate Annabel Letter and go "seeds sssssp".
The Regime would have worked better if it were a straight-up spoof of the last years of Enver Hoxha's regime, but with Kate Winslet as a female version.
I quite liked the show at first. But a compelling story line never emerged and I forgot to keep watching after a few episodes. It felt like all premise, and premise isn't enough without an interesting story. Performances were good.
Succession was a thin on narrative as well, but it had a large cast of messy and relatable personalities interacting in juicy combinations and with a lot of humor. It was Arrested Development played a little more straight, a bit of a guilty pleasure soap opera. In comparison, The Regime had very few main characters, mostly cold and distant. The setting didn't seem very clearly defined as to how fantastical the rules of the storytelling universe were playing by. It was funny at times but nowhere near enough to get by as a comedy.
It's a shame it didn't work out.
It was a great show
And I don't think it failed
Well, going to the ratings, critics and audience awareness it definitely failed under the HBO standards.
So many people here keep on calling it boring due to them not being too interested in politics. I'm a 28 year old man that is not one that is interested I never was bored with it at all. Heck, I never even knew it was supposed to be a satire or anything, nor did i see it as duch.
In fact as was genuinely interested in seeing how this whole thing goes and was captivated in it more than I was with others that came a bit before and after it like that despicable disaster that was that True Detective revival. But like that show, the ending for this really soured my opinion of the show as it ended up making that all that duo was trying to do completely pointless by committing to Elena's selfishness at the end and then some. It was what lead me to not want to rewatch it yet, again unlike Night Country, it wasn't something I regretted watching at all in the first place
I've watched it and I'm still waiting for the comedy. I thought it'd be like the death of Stalin, but it wasn't...
I watched 2 maybe 3 episodes. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t terrible but with all the other stuff I was watching and was on my watch list it just was worth my time.
They should've made a real show about a fuctional kim jung un type of dictator. Show what a modern day version of game of thrones would be like
Started out interesting then it meandered.
Reality is currently weirder than the show thus making it irrelevant.
i honestly loved it! so funny and sarcastic, i liked it.
One of the best things of seen all year....wtf
Not everyone is aware of or interested in politics - especially European politics. Vernham may be a send up of Georgia Meloni, or the whole cobalt sub-plot could be about the hold Russia's oil fields has on democratic Europe. With all her love talk toward her people, her egotism, and germaphobia, she may be Trump, especially her ongoing attempts to please her abusive dead daddy. Some critics have labeled the series scattered and pointless, but I think the menage a trois between this nameless country, China, and US reveals the toxicity of today's geopolitics, especially the colonialism of both China and the US. The series is very clear about how common people suffer under dictators... it doesn't matter if the dear leader is Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Xi Xing Peng, Tyyip Erdogan, Mohammad bin Salman, or an amalgam of them, it stands as a clear warning against authoritarianism, and it was extremely funny. At least as funny as "Don't Look Up." I think it will become a cult classic over time.
I actually enjoyed the show, but agree with many of your points.
I had no idea the show was satire...
Rome was a show I couldn't stop watching and then they killed it. As for this regime show I got a couple of episodes in and I had no idea what it was about. I also didn't care how important the main character thinks she is, if you don't build up to the viewer understanding it, then it doesn't matter.
This is not a satire. It's just a fun watch guys. For real. I enjoyed it during my burnout recovery.