Catherine The Great

In short, there's a zesty story to be told here. But it mostly isn't in this miniseries.

Even if you can get over the historical inaccuracies, the show still falls kind of flat. I wanted to love it, but I just couldn’t get into it.

Catherine The Great’s storytelling never manages to equal the grandeur of its richly detailed set design; as the series unfolds, those extravagant visuals become more and more like façades from the mythical Potemkin villages. ... Mirren and Clarke deliver compelling performances as a clever, iron-willed queen and a soldier turned high-ranking statesman, respectively.

You can feel that director Philip Martin and screenwriter Nigel Williams are relying on the mighty Dame Helen to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting here. You can also sense when, despite her best efforts, that particular plan of action still falls short.

In effect, the miniseries trims the tawdry and scurrilous details from the monarchy's biography and replaces them with a much more conventional story of a woman whose greatest ideas are supplied by or on behalf of a compelling man. On her own behalf, Catherine mostly fights a repetitive battle to maintain control,

“Catherine the Great” is a handsome and competent production that luxuriates in every regal Russian set it gets (albeit with an occasionally distracting green screen for more elaborate outdoor scenes). Mirren is as good as aforementioned, and Gina McKee especially pops as the Countess Praskovya Bruce. ... And yet: stepping back from the series’ four episodes reveals a disappointing lack of ambition in portraying such a titanic force’s final days.

Mirren will get an Emmy nod for this because she's Mirren. She is a great actress, and she's certainly good here. A pity she'll get that nod for so cramped a story.

Mirren is in full command of the role. ... But the script is nowhere near as commanding as her portrayal of Catherine. ... Our fascination with the story, though, comes and goes, even with Mirren consistently rising above and transcending the inconsistent writing.