Tony McNamara’s The Great does not want to be a history lesson. Hulu’s promotional materials called it “anti-historical,” and the onscreen title card agrees: The Great: An Occasionally True Story. The series ran three seasons and 30 episodes on Hulu, from May 15, 2020 to May 12, 2023, and it spent that run treating 18th century Russia as a sandbox for jokes, blood and bad marriages.
Trailer, via Hulu.
Catherine the Nothing Arrives on Hulu
The premise is simple enough to fit on a postcard. Catherine, played by Elle Fanning, starts as an outsider and ends as the longest-reigning female ruler in Russia’s history. The show is highly fictionalized, following her youth and her marriage to Emperor Peter III, played by Nicholas Hoult. The engine of the plot is a conspiracy to kill her depraved and dangerous husband.
That is the shape of a prestige drama. The Great is not one. It is an absurdist satirical black comedy-drama, and it wears the label without apology. McNamara, an Australian playwright and screenwriter, built the series from his own 2008 play of the same name. He created it and wrote most of it.
Fanning and Hoult were confirmed in the lead roles at the pilot stage. The supporting bench filled out fast: Phoebe Fox, Sacha Dhawan, Charity Wakefield and Gwilym Lee joined in November 2018; Sebastian De Souza, Adam Godley and Douglas Hodge came aboard in January 2020. Gillian Anderson was cast on May 14, 2021, as Johanna, Catherine’s mother.
Peter III, a Body Double and the Court Around Them
Hoult does double duty. He plays Emperor Peter III and Peter’s body double, Yemelyan Pugachev — a casting trick the show uses for both farce and menace. Fanning’s Catherine is the center the whole thing turns on, and the two performances are the reason the series works at all.
The court around them is crowded and specific. Phoebe Fox plays Marial. Gwilym Lee is Grigor Dymov. Adam Godley is the Archbishop. Douglas Hodge is General Velementov. Belinda Bromilow plays Elizabeth Petrovna. Bayo Gbadamosi is Arkady. Charity Wakefield is Georgina Dymova. Florence Keith-Roach is Tatyana. Grace Molony plays Queen Agnes.
That is a lot of names, and The Great earns them. The show is a comedy about power first and a costume drama second, and it needs a full court to keep the knives moving.
Three Seasons, One Long Climb
Hulu released all ten episodes of season one on May 15, 2020. The renewal came in July 2020, and season two premiered on November 19, 2021. A third season was ordered in January 2022 and premiered on May 12, 2023.
The reception shifted upward as it went. Season one drew mostly positive reviews. Seasons two and three drew critical acclaim, with particular praise for the directing, writing, humor, costumes and cast performances — especially Fanning and Hoult.
The awards followed the reviews. The series picked up seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations. In 2022, Fanning was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series and Hoult for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
What the Emmys Got Right
The Fanning and Hoult nominations are the correct ones, and not just as a courtesy to the leads. The Great lives or dies on whether you enjoy watching these two people fight, scheme and occasionally mean it. Fanning plays Catherine as a woman assembling herself in real time. Hoult plays Peter as a monster who is funnier than he should be, which is the harder job.
The show’s refusal of historical accuracy is not a flaw to be forgiven. It is the mechanic. Calling it anti-historical is accurate, and it frees the writing from the obligation to be solemn. The costumes and the court intrigue give the jokes something to push against.
Where it stumbles is in the middle distance. The Great is a British-American production with an Australian creator, and it has the energy of a show that knows its central joke early and then has to keep feeding it. Thirty episodes is a long time to sustain a premise built on one marriage. The series does not always find new ground, but it never loses the thread.
The Verdict on The Great
This is a comedy that treats its own subject as raw material and gets away with it. The Great is not a portrait of Catherine the Great. It is a portrait of two people who happen to be named Catherine and Peter, and the show is honest about that from the title card onward.
The casting is the strongest argument for it. Fanning and Hoult are the reason the Emmy voters showed up in 2022, and they are the reason the second and third seasons improved on the first. The writing around them is sharp enough to justify the length.
What holds it back from a higher mark is consistency. Season one is mostly positive; the later seasons are the ones worth defending. A show that peaks in its back half is rarer than one that burns out, and The Great earns credit for that. It also never quite becomes more than a very good version of what it set out to be.
The Great is worth the watch for the two leads and the court around them. It is not the definitive Catherine the Great story, and it never wanted to be.
KEY FACTS
– Score: 7.4/10
– Network: Hulu
– Created by: Tony McNamara
– Seasons: 3
– Episodes: 30
– First aired: May 15, 2020
– Last aired: May 12, 2023
– Genres: Drama, Comedy
– Metacritic: 74/100
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