She who must be OBEYED
Kate Winslet is on imperious form as a deranged dictator ...and it’s such a titanic performance not even Hugh Grant can get a look-in
THE REGIME
Monday, Sky Atlantic, 9pm
Some characters are so entertainingly unpleasant that you’ll watch a show just to see what they do and maybe, just maybe, understand why. Francis Urquhart in House Of Cards is a good example, as is Dr Gregory House in House, and Tony Soprano in The Sopranos – all charmingly vile characters, but all also men.
Now meet Chancellor Elena Vernham, the charismatically deranged despot of a small Central European nation, played with depth and pure showbiz pizzazz by Kate Winslet, right. From the moment she steps on screen, holding all around her in her thrall, you’re waiting to see what she does next and wanting to understand why.
Why would a woman trained as a doctor have a rabidly unscientific fear of mould, and employ hordes of people to remove it from her palace? Why, at a big dinner for US dignitaries, would she dress up like a second-tier Vegas lounge act and murder Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now in front of everyone? And why would she hire an apparently psychotic soldier to protect her?
These questions are all answered over the course of The Regime, a six-part mix of drama and political satire from writer Will Tracy (Succession). Tracy’s story plays with our political preconceptions as it unfolds and, while its ideas look simple at the start – echoing the ‘rich people are bad’ ethos of his dark 2022 movie satire The Menu – they evolve intriguingly as it goes on.
Where the show does fall short is in having another character to balance Winslet’s. The closest we come to that is Andrea Riseborough as Agnes, Vernham’s loyal underling, a woman with an all too understanding nature that allows her to rationalise working for a person who clearly doesn’t care what happens to her. That’s where the poignancy of the show comes from, but it’s not central enough to the story.
Fundamentally, this is a thoughtful, unpredictable, thoroughly entertaining ride of a show that’s willing to take risks (wait till you see what they do with
Hugh Grant, her deposed predecessor) and has been made on the kind of scale that allows you to believe that Vernham’s regime actually exists. They filmed at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, former home of the Habsburgs.
The reason people will watch, though, is Winslet. She’s a performer at the peak of her powers, and the sheer variety of roles she has excelled in, even recently, is dizzying – later this year she’s playing the model-turnedwartime photographer Lee Miller in Lee, a movie she also produced. On screen, Winslet rules.