Quickie Review: The Great

[Kevin M.]

Downton Abbey meets Deadwood, set in Russia, with decent if not macabre jokes and senseless acts of violence... characters and storylines are very cheesy daytime soap opera caliber. For Hulu, it is ambitious. 

--

Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Dave Sikula]

It could be one of the ten worst things ever on teevee and would still be miles ahead of that awful Helen Mirren thing on HBO. I'm in on this one for at least a couple of episodes.

--Dave Sikula

[Tom Wolper]

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 5:28 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

It could be one of the ten worst things ever on teevee and would still be miles ahead of that awful Helen Mirren thing on HBO. I'm in on this one for at least a couple of episodes.

When I give a series a chance I will stick with it until something really dumb happens that takes me out of it. I also find it increasingly difficult to immerse myself in stories. Somehow I find The Great compelling even with all of its dumb stuff. I'm almost through the season and I think about the stories and themes after each episode.

One thing that drives me nuts is that there is a lot of sex, with one exception all M-F intercourse, and it is almost always fully clothed. There was a certain sense to it when Peter and Catherine were first married and it signaled their lack of intimacy. The series is rated TV-MA and I understand if Hulu doesn't want the level of nudity that HBO has. And maybe the actors aren't prepared to be shown nude. But two characters can just as easily be shown under the sheets as fully clothed. Or the sex can take place off screen and the characters can mention that it happened.

[Dave Sikula]

I’m about halfway through episode one and am hard pressed to think of another show I’ve hated as much. Except for Adam Godley, I cant find any saving graces.

YMMV.

—Dave Sikula

[Tom Wolper]

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 1:01 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I’m about halfway through episode one and am hard pressed to think of another show I’ve hated as much. Except for Adam Godley, I cant find any saving graces.

YMMV.

I did say it caught my attention despite its flaws, not that those flaws weren't prominent. The whole season was written by Tony McNamara based on a play he wrote and apparently only performed in Sydney years ago. Making historical drama means taking historical narratives and bringing them to a modern audience in a modern idiom. I don't really identify with McNamara's vision but over the course of the season an interesting story develops: a young enlightenment era noble woman is brought to the detached, corrupt, and decadent Russian court to become empress. Can she gain power, is it worth gaining power, and what will she have to sacrifice of her beliefs and morals to do it?

[Dave Sikula]

I have no objection to revisionism like that; I loved McNamara's "The Favorite," one of my favorite plays of recent years is Lucas Hnath's "A Doll's House, Part 2," and Shakespeare is nothing if not taking old stories and repurposing them for contemporary audiences. There was just something about the British smugness of this one that hit all the wrong notes for me.

What was especially puzzling was, since Catherine is an outsider anyway, why make her speak in that British accent? Let her be German via America. It worked for Armando Iannucci in "The Death of Stalin" (another revisionist take that I enjoyed, by the way).

--Dave Sikula

[PGage]

I liked it better than Dave did, but is frustratingly flawed. The revisionism is most definitely not the problem per se, though Catherine’s story is amazing and women empowering enough on its own that it’s not clear why they chose this to give a modern update to. Most of the changes serve to oversimplify a very complex woman and story. They want Russia to be woke to the enlightenment by a group of post me too, post millennials who talk and act more like they live in AOC’s Queens than 18th century St Petersburg. 

The above choices are not all bad, and I thought the acting was mostly engaging, and the storytelling coherent (unlike the HBO series, which is quite literally incoherent and almost literally unwatchable).

Someone mentioned the frequent, never-nude sex scenes. There is no doubt that if this show were made 7 years ago the three main female leads would have each had double digit minutes total of revealed breasts and buttox. Since the main lead is an actress I can’t help but still think of as 10 years old, I was glad they kept her mostly covered up (a few seconds of side boob, and one lingering, majestic full ass shot which could easily have been one of the famous butt doubles. I had the feeling that this was the kind of production where the female lead had the juice to preclude most nude scenes, they were not going to force lesser billed actresses to take up the slack, which is always kind of creepy.

 But this also seemed consistent with the ideological line they were trying to walk, maintaining the focus on the predatory and coercive nature of male sexuality while avoiding the neo-Puritanism of some varieties of feminism. I think that also explains the ratio of sexual nudity (low) to sexual verbal profanity (high). People are not naked very much but they say words like “fuc*”, “coc*” and “cun*” a lot.

I am not expert on Russian history, but in addition to changes they made to Catherine’s story, they seemed to have played fast and lose with her husband Peter III, who was as I understand the grandson of Peter the Great, not his son. Not sure why they did this, possibly to underline another anachronism, a post Freudian understanding of fathers and sons (also sets up what seems to be a line the screenplay is proud of, the King of Sweden commiserating with Peter that at least his own father was only know as Olaf the Okay).

I’m not mad that I spent the time watching it, but somewhat irritated the considerable talents of the actors and production team were not spent on a better executed story.

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[Tom Wolper]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 12:32 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I have no objection to revisionism like that; I loved McNamara's "The Favorite," one of my favorite plays of recent years is Lucas Hnath's "A Doll's House, Part 2," and Shakespeare is nothing if not taking old stories and repurposing them for contemporary audiences. There was just something about the British smugness of this one that hit all the wrong notes for me.

What was especially puzzling was, since Catherine is an outsider anyway, why make her speak in that British accent? Let her be German via America. It worked for Armando Iannucci in "The Death of Stalin" (another revisionist take that I enjoyed, by the way).

I agree about the accent. One of the innovations of Peter the Great was making French the language of the court. So young Catherine can show up without knowing a word of Russian and not have any trouble conversing with anybody at court. But once she leaves court to engage with the real Russia she should be lost. The series makes no effort to make a distinction in the languages.

Lanthimos gave the script of The Favourite to McNamara because he thought it needed to be lightened up. However much McNamara contributed, he did not structure the story or define the characters. And Iannucci is going to come up with a product, period. I didn't have expectations of watching something at his level when I watched the series.

[Tom Wolper]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 9:19 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Someone mentioned the frequent, never-nude sex scenes. There is no doubt that if this show were made 7 years ago the three main female leads would have each had double digit minutes total of revealed breasts and buttox. Since the main lead is an actress I can’t help but still think of as 10 years old, I was glad they kept her mostly covered up (a few seconds of side boob, and one lingering, majestic full ass shot which could easily have been one of the famous butt doubles. I had the feeling that this was the kind of production where the female lead had the juice to preclude most nude scenes, they were not going to force lesser billed actresses to take up the slack, which is always kind of creepy.

 But this also seemed consistent with the ideological line they were trying to walk, maintaining the focus on the predatory and coercive nature of male sexuality while avoiding the neo-Puritanism of some varieties of feminism. I think that also explains the ratio of sexual nudity (low) to sexual verbal profanity (high). People are not naked very much but they say words like “fuc*”, “coc*” and “cun*” a lot.

Elle Fanning has an executive producer credit and it's possible that she had the clout to nix any proposed nudity. It's also possible that the producers in general or Hulu decided that nudity was not necessary to tell the story. Like I said in my previous comment, fully clothed sex is a good visual way of showing no intimacy between Peter and Catherine when they do their duty to produce an heir. And I accept it could be a way to show the lack of intimacy if the act is coercive. But there are times in the series where it's done for mutually consented sex and that's what I don't get. Just start the scene with tem under a sheet or in the tall grass or something where we know they are naked even if we cannot see it.

I am not expert on Russian history, but in addition to changes they made to Catherine’s story, they seemed to have played fast and lose with her husband Peter III, who was as I understand the grandson of Peter the Great, not his son. Not sure why they did this, possibly to underline another anachronism, a post Freudian understanding of fathers and sons (also sets up what seems to be a line the screenplay is proud of, the King of Sweden commiserating with Peter that at least his own father was only know as Olaf the Okay).

I’m not mad that I spent the time watching it, but somewhat irritated the considerable talents of the actors and production team were not spent on a better executed story.

Going through the history gives a much different story. Peter and Catherine were second cousins who grew up in "Germany." Quotes because Catherine's Prussian hometown is in Poland today. Peter grew up in Holstein near the border with Denmark. Peter's mother was Peter the Great's daughter and that was his path to the throne. Catherine grew up as Princess Sophie and had her name changed when she converted to Russian Orthodoxy before her betrothal (and that really should have been shown in the series). Peter ruled for only six months before the coup.

I read an interview with Tony McNamara where he said the historical Peter was nothing like his character but he wrote him that way to be an antagonist to Catherine.

[Dave Sikula]

I was using Iannucci solely as an example of someone who didn't want his cast to have uniformly bad accents (as in Americans do phony-English accents or Brits mangling American).

That said, though (and speaking of disappointing series), WTF was up with "Avenue 5?" I watched every episode and still have no idea of what it was about. other than its crummy plot.

--Dave Sikula

[Kevin M.]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 4:11 PM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I was using Iannucci solely as an example of someone who didn't want his cast to have uniformly bad accents (as in Americans do phony-English accents or Brits mangling American).

That said, though (and speaking of disappointing series), WTF was up with "Avenue 5?" I watched every episode and still have no idea of what it was about. other than its crummy plot.

I adored Avenue 5, and related to the topic of accents, I found the jokes and usage of Hugh Laurie’s accent(s) to be well crafted. 

--Dave Sikula

On Monday, June 15, 2020 at 7:51:34 AM UTC-7, Tom Wolper wrote:

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 12:32 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I have no objection to revisionism like that; I loved McNamara's "The Favorite," one of my favorite plays of recent years is Lucas Hnath's "A Doll's House, Part 2," and Shakespeare is nothing if not taking old stories and repurposing them for contemporary audiences. There was just something about the British smugness of this one that hit all the wrong notes for me.

What was especially puzzling was, since Catherine is an outsider anyway, why make her speak in that British accent? Let her be German via America. It worked for Armando Iannucci in "The Death of Stalin" (another revisionist take that I enjoyed, by the way).

I agree about the accent. One of the innovations of Peter the Great was making French the language of the court. So young Catherine can show up without knowing a word of Russian and not have any trouble conversing with anybody at court. But once she leaves court to engage with the real Russia she should be lost. The series makes no effort to make a distinction in the languages.

Lanthimos gave the script of The Favourite to McNamara because he thought it needed to be lightened up. However much McNamara contributed, he did not structure the story or define the characters. And Iannucci is going to come up with a product, period. I didn't have expectations of watching something at his level when I watched the series.

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Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Tom Wolper]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 8:02 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 4:11 PM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV <tvor...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I was using Iannucci solely as an example of someone who didn't want his cast to have uniformly bad accents (as in Americans do phony-English accents or Brits mangling American).

That said, though (and speaking of disappointing series), WTF was up with "Avenue 5?" I watched every episode and still have no idea of what it was about. other than its crummy plot.

I adored Avenue 5, and related to the topic of accents, I found the jokes and usage of Hugh Laurie’s accent(s) to be well crafted.

Here's the part where I take back everything I said about The Great and I sincerely regret recommending the series. I saw in Wikipedia that Catherine published her memoirs and I checked my library app to see if they were available as an ebook. They weren't but I could borrow a biography, so I did and started reading it. Her story is fascinating and would make a great TV miniseries or series. It also has nothing in common with The Great besides the names. The comparison for The Great to history would be F Troop or Hogan's Heroes.

When I watched The Great I knew instinctively that there were major things that couldn't be accurate. Catherine would not have shown up alone at the Russian court. She at the least would have her own ladies in waiting. The court seemed too insular; as a growing power there would have been ambassadors from the other powers there. Giving Catherine only one servant, while understandable for casting reasons, seemed wrong. The war with Sweden seemed to belong to an earlier period.

And in fact the war with Sweden was fought in Peter the Great's time and was over decades before Catherine went to St Petersburg. The relevant European power struggle in Catherine's day was between Prussia and Austria and that was the catalyst for both Catherine's betrothal and her coup. Peter's aunt Elizabeth was Empress of Russia. Peter the Great had changed the law for the tsar's succession from oldest male heir to anyone the tsar appoints which led to the possibility of rule by empress. After being passed over several times Elizabeth staged a bloodless coup to become empress. She was childless and adopted her sister's young son Peter as heir to the throne. He was a German prince who never wanted to go to Russia or to become a ruler. Peter and Catherine were married when Peter was 16 and Catherine was 15. Peter didn't become tsar until a decade later when Elizabeth died and Catherine deposed him 6 months after that. As I said, a fascinating history and it had nothing to do with the TV series.