Bawdy period comedy is a little less Great than its title
For some reason, I couldn’t get Liz Truss out of my head when watching The Great (Channel 4). I think it’s because this second series begins with a ruthless power struggle for the top job – Catherine the Great and her husband, Peter III, at war with one another for control of Russia. But perhaps it’s also because just before watching it I’d been reading a profile of Truss, in which a former colleague described her as “chaotic and eccentric, with a manic energy” and that is this show in a nutshell.
The Great comes with the disclaimer that it is “an occasionally true story” and is absolutely not the drama to watch if you’re looking for factual accuracy. But the show is upfront about what it’s doing. This is a bawdy romp that revels in its own absurdity, an X-rated Horrible Histories filled with dialogue that feels made for Tiktok. In episode one, Catherine (Elle Fanning) encounters two children playing football with a severed head. When Catherine confiscates the head, one of the kids calls her a “b---h”. “Empress B---h,” corrects the monarch.
We pick up the story with Peter under siege after Catherine launched a coup at the end of series one. Things aren’t going well for him. She has secured the services of the royal chef, while Peter is reduced to eating rats.
The producers have gone for youth – Fanning is a fresh-faced 24 – and it’s certainly more fun than the turgid series from a few years back starring Helen Mirren. The star of the show is Nicholas Hoult as the capricious Peter, in an outrageous performance that simultaneously channels two Blackadder monarchs: Hugh Laurie’s Prince George and Miranda Richardson’s Queen Elizabeth. Peter is a sex-obsessed sociopath with the attention span of a toddler, and Hoult is very funny at portraying these things at once, although – rather like a toddler – his behaviour can become wearing. Writer Tony Mcnamara falls back on sexual references and swearing a bit too often.
Catherine’s character, though, is a bit of a void. Fanning looks very lovely in a succession of fabulous costumes, but it’s hard to discern what is going on inside her head. Why does she want to rule Russia? How does she truly feel about her husband? Mcnamara doesn’t make it clear. Nor does he throw many bones in the direction of supporting characters. Douglas Hodge is an old pro, so makes the most of his lines as General Velementov, but Sacha Dhawan’s Orlo is dull. Things may perk up on that front, though, when Gillian Anderson joins the series as Catherine’s mother.
It turns out that The Most Hated Man on the Internet (Netflix) isn’t Donald Trump or Piers Morgan. It’s someone called Hunter Moore, and he truly is a scumbag.
Moore found notoriety a decade ago for running a “revenge porn” website. Anonymous users could upload naked or sexually explicit photos of unwitting victims. The motivation was spite, and the aim was humiliation. Moore made sure that the victims’ names, Facebook profiles and sometimes even their home addresses or workplaces were listed alongside the stolen pictures. Underneath the images, people were encouraged to leave messages, calling the women “sluts” and “ugly b---hes”.
The rise and fall of the site is explored in this three-part documentary. It is presented in that recognisably Netflix way: a dramatic narrative arc; contributors talking direct to camera with the fluency of seasoned actors; and a cast of heroes, villains and eccentric supporting characters.
The heroine is Charlotte Laws, who became involved after her daughter, Kayla, appeared on the site. Kayla had taken topless pictures of herself with no intention of showing them to anyone else, but they ended up on the site after her email account was hacked.
Laws discovered 40 others who were also victims of hacking. This proved crucial because Moore’s website was not illegal, but hacking is. She was determined to bring him to justice, in the face of rape and death threats from Moore’s supporters. One of the most depressing aspects of the story – and there are many – is that Moore had an army of fans who idolised him, while media outlets lauded him as a “renegade”. He thrived on the publicity, bragging about his ability to ruin lives and laughing in the face of girls who pleaded to be removed from the site.
That rather begs the question: why dredge this up a decade on, bringing him back into public consciousness? The series is rated 18 and it’s full of truly unpleasant things that I shan’t list here. Could it be that Netflix thinks people will enjoy the salacious details and is repackaging the awful content under the guise of a cautionary tale?
The Great ★★★
The Most Hated Man on the Internet ★★