Great writer, a fabulous cast ... so why is The Regime a dud?
The Regime Monday, Sky Atlantic ☆☆★★★ Hannah Waddingham’s Eurovision 1974 Celebration S unday, BBC4 ☆☆☆☆★
The Regime has everything going for it on paper. Everything. It is written by Will Tracy (The Menu, and he was in the writers’ room for Succession). It is co-directed by Stephen Frears (A Very English Scandal, Philomena, Quiz, etc). It stars Kate Winslet (too much great stuff to list, everything since the ship thing). It could only have more going for it if, say, Hugh Grant popped up, and he does.
So why is it… I don’t know how to put this nicely so I’ll just say it straight… so boring? There are six episodes (all available) and throughout I wanted to thrash this with a broom while shouting: ‘You have everything going for you so, for heaven’s sake, do the decent thing and come to life.’ It never did.
It’s a satire. Or is it? I don’t know what it is, to tell you the truth. What I can say is that it is set in an unnamed central European country led by a bonkers, tyrannical dictator. This is Chancellor Elena Vernham (Winslet), who speaks in an exaggeratedly posh English accent from a lopsided mouth. (Why? Has she had a stroke?) She lives in a Ceausescustyle palace, while her sartorial style is, I would say, Penny Mordaunt at the Coronation except when she actually has to meet her people, then it’s more The Sound Of Music. (Fair play, the costumes and sets are magnificent.)
She is surrounded by yes-men, has servants who are expected to cater for her every whim and is a delusional hypochondriac who, in the first episode, is fixated on mould. When Corporal Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a tormented, violent former soldier, is plucked inexplicably from obscurity to become a member of her household, bringing his folk remedies with him – he will have her eating mud and inhaling ‘potato steam’. This could have become a tortured love story but then it doesn’t become a tortured love story. That’s the problem. It could have been many things. But then isn’t.
It could have been a satire and, I think, it aims to be a satire, but it has none of the bite or wit or perceptiveness of, for example, Armando Iannucci’s The Death Of Stalin, and what is it satirising? The rise of Rightwing populism? Despotic, corrupt governments? America’s meddling? It’s never clear. And it’s not funny enough to be a comedy.
In one scene, Elena massacres a karaoke version of Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now for a visiting American dignitary, which should be hilarious except… it isn’t. I’m still trying to work out why. Perhaps because you sense that, instead of having something to say, this has opted for something quite cheap. There’s also a perimenopause joke that seemingly goes on for ever, and as for the elaborate insults – someone smells ‘like a hog’s urethra’ – didn’t Iannucci get in there first? And can he be surpassed? (No.)
Winslet is wholly committed and inhales potato steam like there’s no tomorrow, but Elena is so deranged from the outset there is nowhere for the character to go. When great actresses are in play you want to see them taking a character from here to there, but she is never required to change gear. Elena is as childish, petulant, clueless and deluded by the end as she was at the outset.
What you are, in effect, watching is one unpleasant person behaving unpleasantly towards others who are also mostly unpleasant. The stakes are low because it’s impossible to care about anybody, although there was a carp – swim away, carp, swim away! – I quite liked. As for the other performances, Hugh Grant does pop up in episode four, but irrelevantly, and he’s wasted, just as Andrea Riseborough is wasted as Elena’s housekeeper. Whatever this did set out to do, it wasn’t good enough to do it, and it doesn’t add up to anything. I didn’t actually die of boredom, but it was a close-run thing.
Eurovision in 1974 was the first Eurovision I was allowed to stay up for, and I’ve never felt the need to relive it, but at the first sight of Katie Boyle in her floor-length salmon evening gown, looking both glamorous and terrifyingly flammable – synthetic fabrics were all the rage then – I was hooked. Hannah Waddingham’s Eurovision 1974 Celebration replayed the entire event to celebrate 50 years since Abba won with Waterloo, and if you didn’t know anything about Sweden, David Vine was on hand to give you a sense of it. ‘It’s a country full of mountains,’ he said confidently.
After Waddingham’s brief introduction we were straight down to it. This is Eurovision before it became camp. This is Eurovision with a full orchestra, a conductor for each nation – Abba’s came dressed as Napoleon – and no choreography to speak of. The microphones were substantial and wired and poor Peret (Spain), who had to have his hands free to play the guitar while singing, had his swinging from a knot in his cravat. (The microphone-cravat look has never taken off.)
Vine, commentating, provided essential information along the lines of: ‘That zipped along’. Or: ‘He’s recovered from the flu which he had all week in Brighton.’ (The contest was staged in Brighton.) The Yugoslavian entry, he told us, was ‘very funny indeed’ with ‘a lot of humour in it’, but as they sang in Serbo-Croat it was hard to ascertain if this was true.
Olivia Newton-John sang our entry wearing what appeared to be a (terrifyingly flammable) nightie, while Vine introduced Abba with: ‘If the jury were all men I’m sure they’d get a lot of the votes.’ Oh, David.
As for the entertainment in the interval? A pre-recording of The Wombles and their hit Remember You’re A Womble (‘remember, member, member what a Womble, Womble, Womble you are’). I remember, member, member all that.
Seriously, were we mad?