‘The Great’ has problems balancing its extravagant snark with its dramatic impulses

Hulu’s “The Great” supplies its own asterisk: “An occasionally true story,” it needlessly acknowledges, as it romps and rambles through a loosely historical take on Catherine the Great’s rise to power in 18th-century Russia. Intended as a dark comedy, it wavers between being gleefully abusive and downright mean.

While its 10 episodes pop along and then fizzle out, a bigger problem presents itself, as “The Great” grows tediously and even torturously long - which may be its cruelest joke of all, as its appreciable style and sass surrender to repetitious rounds of palace intrigue.

Otherwise, things start out swimmingly, as “The Great” (premiering Friday) offers a clever, anachronistic mash-up of past and present, where modern manners and dialogue meet the vivid extravagance of a period piece, owing debts to Stephen Frears’s “Dangerous Liaisons” and Sofia Coppola’s dreamy mingling of “Marie Antoinette” and Valley Girl sensibilities.

Comparisons abound as we go, bringing to mind pieces of the CW’s “Reign,” Showtime’s “The Tudors,” and, more recently, Apple TV Plus’s “Dickinson” - where creators have used modern speech and alterna-hit soundtracks to throw open the heavy drapes of history and let in some fresh relevance. The glib banter that accompanies “The Great’s” torture scenes even carry a wicked whiff of Monty Python.

But it’s never a good sign when a critic starts listing all the other movies and shows that remind him of the thing he’s supposed to be reviewing; it indicates a lapse in originality. To all those comparisons, we can add one more: the 2018 film “The Favourite,” for which “The Great’s” creator and writer, Tony McNamara, received an Oscar nomination for co-writing. When all is said and done, it’s the same sort of rock ‘n’ droll, with a giddy command of vulgarity to go with it.

Elle Fanning gives it her all as young Catherine, the cucumbercool, Prussian-born German princess who is married off to Russian Emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult). Upon arriving - and having her virginity crudely verified by a sycophantic archbishop (Adam Godley) - Catherine is appalled by her self-absorbed husband and the volatile and delusional way he rules over a palace full of loyal subjects who ceaselessly echo his obnoxious declarations of “huzzah,” obey his inane edicts and laugh nervously at his twisted jokes.

Hoult brings a boyish, blueeyed menace to the job, even if the role leans too heavily on satire and only belatedly deepens into something slightly more human. Peter is a tyrant who is too dense and too bacchanalian to effectively rule - a spoiled man-child who keeps his beloved mother’s desiccated corpse on display. “You are the only person who has not loved me,” Peter tells Catherine. “It’s inconceivable.”

Peter oversees a subservient empire of sexual and moral iniquity - and inequality, of course. (“We can’t read,” one of the palace’s noble women informs Catherine, when she asks them if they’re up on the new ideas brewing in European enlightenment.)

Appeased somewhat by Leo (Sebastian De Souza), the enthusiastic lover assigned to her by the emperor, Catherine discovers that she (and not some distant heir) can claim the throne if Peter is killed or otherwise deposed. Her dreams of ruling a more sophisticated Russia start to take hold, aided by her maid, Marial (Phoebe Fox). Catherine sets about using her charms and intelligence to win more secret allies in her plot for a coup.

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Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

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