- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Oct 3, 2019
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Critic Reviews
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It helps to have Clarke, Roxburgh and Kinnear, three of the best going, around her, broad-shouldered men in this women’s world. If the dialogue is occasionally over-expository, that’s understandable, and on the whole the starry team makes cantering over all this historical turf look surprisingly intimate. Catherine’s not quite great, yet, but she’s very good.
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There’s something hot, heady, and transporting about this fantasy of shared rule—a world full of treasures ready for the taking, a woman in charge, and a man who adores her without hesitation. ... Catherine the Great reframes her desire as part of her glory—and revels in that glory, without asking too many awkward questions
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Mirren is the reason to watch, and reason enough. It’s no knock against the rest of the cast or the production designer or costumers or digital matte painters, who have all acquitted themselves bravely, even brilliantly, to say that there is no other particularly compelling reason to spend four hours in this slice of 18th century history.
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The peccadilloes of royalty never go out of fashion, but Catherine -- with her tumultuous decades-long reign -- brings more intrigue to the party than most. Couple that with Mirren's presence, and "Catherine the Great" pretty well lives up to its name.
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Having Helen Mirren fabulously bring this overlooked monarch to life at a moment when women’s fitness to lead is, unbelievably, still being questioned makes this four-hour romp worthwhile. But I’m struck by two things. Catherine the Great looks and feels like something HBO could have done 15 years ago, and indeed did do 15 years ago with this same team.
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Nothing is subtle about it: not the acting, not the directing by Philip Martin, not the production design, not the costumes. It’s full-tilt scenery-chewing glamour in every frame of every scene. ... And, for the most part, it works. Mirren is in full DAME HELEN MIRREN mode, regal and saucy and steely by turn.
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Mirren is great here. ... Catherine the Great falls into every trap that awaits a biographical miniseries cramming decades of the complex life of a ruler into a handful of hours. ... The best parts of the show are about the ways that her power enriches her love, and vice versa.
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Catherine’s lack of change, along with her consistent ability to outmaneuver her political opponents, robs the series of momentum despite the astonishing range of Mirren and Clarke’s performances. No threat to Catherine’s reign is ever serious, no geopolitical conflict ever out of her or Potemkin’s control. Conspiracies and wars serve merely to punctuate the show’s development of the romance at its core. That love story, however, doesn’t evolve much either.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 14
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Mixed: 8 out of 14
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Negative: 2 out of 14
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Oct 30, 2019
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Nov 5, 2019