The Regime

Those looking for Succession-style density here will have to keep searching. But that doesn’t mean that The Regime isn’t clever. This is one of the most shrewd and unexpected affairs that HBO has pursued in a moment, and under the rule of Winslet’s manic genius, audiences should flock to its wacky wits in droves.

“The Regime” has a keen eye for the aesthetics of fascism, from an absurd woman-of-the-people photoshoot in a cabbage patch to Eurovisionesque extravaganzas. Just because these spectacles are laughably tacky doesn’t mean they’re without menace. And in the psychosexual folie à deux between Vernham and Zubak, there’s a canny use of infatuation as a metaphor for a cult of personality.

Authoritarian shadows aside, “The Regime” is also supremely entertaining, much of the credit going to Ms. Winslet.

Above all, HBO’s latest series, The Regime, is about the joys of watching one of her generation’s greatest actors chewing scenery with gusto as a power-hungry, germaphobe of a stateswoman eager to make sure her vanity and her ambitions (both for herself and for her country) are in fine alignment as she navigates increased tensions within and abroad.

The final episode, in particular, feels rushed, as if Tracy had a bunch of new ideas to explore and not enough time to do so. Having said that, “The Regime” is never boring, and the first few episodes are as sharply written as anything that’s been on HBO for a long time.

If The Regime is rarely as funny as a zippy satire should be (it doesn't have a ton of actual jokes, and the comedy is often met with more of an exhale-through-your-nose acknowledgement than an actual laugh), it's the delicious push and pull of that relationship that keeps you watching.

Beyond a tour de force performance from Kate Winslet, an underserved Hugh Grant and some solid support from Matthias Schoenaerts, The Regime is weighed down by an overabundance of ideas.

Don’t expect the kind of clever sendups that, as in Armando Iannucci’s “Veep” and “The Thick of It,” elevate political comedy into something higher than simple black-and-white farce. What you can expect, though, is some entertaining work from Winslet.

Her [Elena's] performance is magnetic; the satire less confident. The story hurtles through a year of chaos, and the ride turns shakier when the tone shifts to straight dramatic thriller. The series feels leery of engaging with the ugly, xenophobic aspects of modern autocracy. It is more comfortable as the story of a demented ruler than a depraved ideology.

It’s plenty good — Winslet is never going to disappoint — but it’s not at the level of Iannucci’s work.

The Regime is a lot of skillfully produced fun, but it never delivers the shrewd political commentary its premise could support. It’s less a satire than a farce—more The Menu than Succession.

For a comedy about authoritarian rule to be truly funny, especially in an era with many crazier real-world examples, it needs to be “Borat”-style over the top. The six-episode “Regime” never gets there. Instead, this limited series plays everything subtle and low-key, refusing to indulge in the satire of the situations presented.

Watching Winslet tear into a character like this is a good enough reason to watch, though as with so many black comedies the tone is a struggle, even in the hands of experienced directors like Stephen Frears (The Queen) and Jessica Hobbs (The Crown).

Not a lot of laughs — as if — but the payoff succeeds and so does Winslet.

There is an obvious grotesque absurdity to many of her moments that cannot help but prompt uneasy, horrified laughter. As the series progresses the sheer oddness of the setting becomes more familiar, and the show can breathe with a lot more ease than the spore-phobic Vernham can. But it is most effective, and affecting, in its darker moments.

Despite Winslet’s off-kilter charisma, it’s just not enough to have you pledging allegiance.

Winslet is so ludicrously watchable that it is hard to take your eyes off her, but when you do, the show runs into trouble.

There are some good lines (the Succession-esque “His profits are fucked like a spring donkey”) and some moments that, however unsubtle, cannot help but raise a smile. .... But overall, the comedy and the drama fall flat. The scattershot aim at everything and nothing leaves the viewer groping for sense and meaning. It feels like a waste of a very good opportunity and a large number of very, very good people.

As the series goes on, changing its spots, the fate of its protagonists becomes less compelling and (within a range of unpredictability) more obvious; the comedy fades and one disinvests from the drama. It’s a sum that’s less than its disparate parts. But I did like the parts.

I wasn’t always sure what The Regime was doing, or why, but Winslet’s work, a complex blending of physical and psychological choices, kept the series somewhere between watchable and fascinating.

The biggest struggle The Regime faces is its tendency to spotlight its worst characters through a more forgiving lens. Wielding comedy to poke fun at Vernham, Zubak, and their increasingly toxic relationship is where the series succeeds most.

Winslet is far from quashed — her all-in portrayal props up scene after scene, episode after episode — but a shining star isn’t meant to shine alone, an opinion “The Regime” itself supports, without realizing it’s got the same problem.

A rare misfire that's too heavy-handed and cynically predictable to score as political satire and too silly to resonate as an allegory of dangerously despotic government. Luckily, this Regime is ruled by Kate Winslet. [11 - 31 Mar 2024, p.5]

Matters develop and devolve amusingly enough, with Winslet and Schoenaerts’ chemistry escalating into codependent insanity until the show gets — for this viewer, at least — a little too dark and consequential to sustain the comedy at which it genuinely excels.

"The Regime", is a series of contradictions, wildly inconsistent in the course of a single episode. If you can get through the sluggish bits (particularly the last three of its six episodes), there's a lot of fun to be had until the bitter end of this absurd ride with Winslet and the rest of the talented cast.

Despite the first-class production design, the game efforts of the ensemble cast and some admirably big swings for the fences, “The Regime” isn’t one of those series where you to love to watch people who are terrible, a la the aforementioned “Succession” and “Veep,” or “The Sopranos” or “Breaking Bad.” In this case, we’re stuck with a group of mostly loathsome individuals who commit the cardinal sin of not being all that interesting while they’re being horrible.

While there’s a seemingly fertile idea in watching how an autocracy crumbles from within and without, as unchecked power breeds a kind of insanity, the more cerebral aspects largely get lost in the show’s eccentricities, overwhelming any sense of nuance.

While The Regime isn’t an outright disaster, for the vast majority of its runtime, it’s unable to deliver scathing political commentary or sharp comedy, instead settling into a humdrum, repetitive cadence.

The Regime may be timely, but it’s not particularly funny, edifying, or insightful. .... Elena can be confounding, but in Winslet’s hands, she’s never boring, and Riseborough’s Agnes — the only character with a modicum of empathy — makes the series’ overall misanthropy a touch more bearable.

Throughout, the humour is blunted Armando Iannucci. The tone lurches alarmingly from absurdist to serious and back again. A plot about a Ukraine-esque invasion feels clumsy.

The Regime is a satire without much of a bite and a comedy without much in the way of jokes. This revolution should not be televised.

Kate Winslet goes all out as the imaginary nation’s Elena Vernham, a neurotic hypochondriac whose delusions can have real and destabilizing, even deadly, results. But the show doesn’t match her vigor or her inventiveness.

Despite Winslet’s hard work – she is very serious in her wish to be funny – The Regime is toothless and joyless and easily HBO’s biggest fumble since The Idol.

Kate Winslet can do anything! But even this acting dynamo, giving her all to the role of a fictional European dictator who’s basically Putin in skirts, can’t save this fractured political farce from drifting clumsily and calamitously into incoherence.

Almost nothing outside of her [Elena (Kate Winslet)] is nearly weird enough to make these six hours interesting or funny enough to live up to the assembled talent.

“The Regime” hammers on and on at the same note until it becomes more of a chore to watch instead of the clever takedown of vile and vain leaders it wants to be.

Were “The Regime” slightly better written, it could at least plead an identity crisis. But it doesn’t even get that far. It’s not funny enough to be a brutal satire about a needy, power-hungry airhead and her sycophants. (HBO already did that and called it “Veep.”) It’s not insightful enough to engender empathy for its despicable characters’ vulnerabilities. (Ditto, “Succession.”) Hell, it’s not even unhinged enough to count as a European politics-inspired remake of “The Idol.”

Ultimately The Regime is a series desperate to say things but can only get as far as noticing them. .... By the end of its run, a great deal of violence and loss happened for almost no gain, loss, or larger purpose. It’s all seeing with nothing to show for it.

Narratively and thematically incoherent, “The Regime” offers no one to root for. That’s fine. But it’s hard to feel any investment in the outcome. There’s some middling critique of the U.S. and its paternalistic approach to geopolitical diplomacy, but it lacks the guts to get real jabs in.