Kate Winslet Rules. The Regime, Not So Much

 

Was the winner for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series coronated last night? It might seem premature to consider that. Before 2023 ended, two exceptional actresses have been formidable contenders: Juno Temple for her superb work in the fifth season of Fargo and Brie Larson in the Apple series Lessons in Chemistry. (I will be reviewing the latter soon, I promise.) The partisans of Night Country will almost certainly be pushing Jodie Foster for her work and the voters will have a devil of a time determine which of the brilliant actresses cast in Capote Vs. The Swans will be nominated for Best Actress or pushed into Best Supporting Actress. Naomi Watts will almost certainly be in the former category and its just as likely Chloe Sevigny will be included as well.

But if history is any indication when The Regime debuted its first episode last night, Kate Winslet moved to the top of the list. Because when HBO and Winslet join forces, the Emmys are powerless to stop either her or her series.

Back in 2011, Winslet took her first Best Actress in a Limited Series for her work in the sterling adaptation of Mildred Pierce which would win six Emmys, including Best Limited Series and Best Supporting Actor for Guy Pearce. Almost to the day ten years later Winslet was at the top of the contenders for a very different limited series Mare of Easttown. In what was a far more formidable field of contenders than a decade earlier, Winslet managed to triumph again for Best Actress over Anya Taylor-Joy, who had dominated the awards to that point for her work in The Queen’s Gambit. While Mare took both Supporting Acting awards, Gambit prevailed for Best Limited Series.

Now less than three years later, Winslet is the lead in a limited series that is completely different from either of those two prestige projects, most critically in tone. While Pierce was a melodrama and Mare a procedural The Regime is a very dark satire with Winslet playing the chancellor of an unnamed Central European country. According to the summary The Regime takes place over the course of a year, at which point (supposedly) there will be a revolution. Whether that actually happens remains to be seen, but what is clear is that Winslet, like with her previous two projects, is the primary draw.

For more than thirty years Winslet has been one of the greatest actresses of all time but in that period she has done precious few comedies. The better ones, including the spectacular Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind always show Winslet has a figure of steadiness. Sometimes there have been contrasts, most notably in the divine Little Children, but in almost all of her work Winslet keeps everything her characters are feeling beneath the surface. When Winslet says in interviews that she has never played a character like Elena before, that’s pretty accurate. Because while her public persona as chancellor is that of someone who is in control, in private Elena is a complete and utter mess.

Elena has been elected Chancellor seven years earlier. (And I’m sure that by doing those calculations we reach 2016 is a complete coincidence on the writer’s part.) The entire ministry and inner circle that surround the chancellor do not so much rule the country as make sure that Elena always feels that she is the center of attention. That means attending to her every whim, no matter how ludicrous. The action of the first episode (and based on how the series looks, likely the entire six episode run) takes place entirely within the palace which Elena has not left in at least a year, possibly longer. Her father died of a lung disease the previous year and she has kept his body in a room in the palace, unwilling to have him buried or likely even embalmed. The palace is old and in need of renovation because of mildew and rot within. (Subtle The Regime isn’t.) The series begins with a soldier, known as Herbert, nicknamed the Butcher (German Actor Matthias Schonaerts) who has been called in to serve as someone to monitor the amount of humidity in the air every time the Chancellor is around.

Herbert, if anything, is far more emotionally broken than Elena is. He is one of the soldier who was part of a slaughter of twelve miners at Pit 5. The official story is that they were putting down a rebellion; it is more likely that they were protesting the horrific conditions and Herbert panicked. He arrives in the palace in a combination of being sedated and some kind of PTSD, combined with whatever else is wrong with him. He can barely answer any of the questions of the chief of staff (Andrea Risborough) before he is led into Elena’s presence. She is about to give a speech and a stage light goes on behind her. “Did I see you in my dream?” is her first line of dialogue.

Elena is beyond psychologically damaged, with the kind of phobia for germs that Howard Hughes might find excessive. She has the attention span of a five year old and cares more for her health than the economic business of the country. She is caring for a young boy that is her chief of staff’s son but that she has come to believe is her own. A dinner that she gives for industrialist is a celebration of her performance ability even though she cannot sing. In the midst of the dinner she turns on Herbert for making her look like an idiot, and it is likely he would end up executed has it not been for the finance minister’s intervention. Herbert spends the night audibly berating himself and punching himself in the face.

That night, a miner gets into the palace because of Elena’s insistence that the windows be kept open in order to deal with the mildew. He gets right up to her bed when Herbert intervenes and basically beats him to death. Two weeks later, Elena is even more behind locked doors than usual but Herbert seems to have taken more care of her because of his saving her life. Near the end of the day Elena has a conversation with Herbert and tells her that he is a nobody and that is why she can trust his opinion in front of her followers who tell her everything she wants to hear. She wants to know what the people truly think of her. Herbert tells her what he believes they think, and by the end of the episode she has thrown her chief ministers in prison and has decided to break a major deal with the Americans, on the basis that the attempt on her life was an attempted coup.

The Regime has a taste of the bizarre and satire that has rarely been seen in most HBO projects with the notable exception of White House Plumbers. If there is a resemblance between the two, it is the idea of the kind of hysterical insanity that often starts within the corridors of power. But it’s one thing to laugh at the incompetent antics of Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, it’s a lot harder to do so when that same insanity involves getting people killed on a whim. Perhaps David Mandel was wise when he chose to keep Richard Nixon offscreen in Plumbers; if we’d actually seen him give orders, it might not be as much fun to see what was going on when  they were carried out.

There is a similar willingness to go over-the-top on the part of the entire cast which is more than up to the challenge. Winslet is clearly having a ball as Elena. For a woman who has been known for primarily playing upright British and European heroines, she’s clearly relishing being able to play someone who is clearly unbalanced and has no filter at all. Schonaerts has a much tougher job than Winslet, but by playing someone who is unstable in a far more different way than Elena it is a darker performance. I hope we get to see more of what is beneath of the surface – if there is anything.

Like most HBO prestige limited series, the guest cast is impressive. Later episodes will feature an American diplomat played by that brilliant talent Martha Plimpton. (And the fact that she bears a slight resemblance to Hilary is another coincidence.) At some point Hugh Grant will grace the stage as the leader of the opposition, which means his character isn’t likely long for this world. Given the nature of this show, I’m expected a body count, though in this case the violence will far more likely occur offscreen – until the end.

The show is directed by one of the most gifted craftsmen Stephen Frears. Frears has been, in a sense, working in this field his entire life, starting with the first and by far best adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons. He brought into the corridors of power with The Queen and more than a decade later showed the ugliness of it in the superb Amazon limited series A Very English Scandal. A brilliant film director, he’s honestly better served in television, while there have been brilliant movies such as Florence Foster Jenkins and Philomena, he’s been better served with work in such series as The Loudest Voice and Quiz. It comes as little shock that the producers are among that gave us Succession.

The question is, however, aside from Winslet, is there anything really deep in The Regime? Winslet has been able to carry lesser projects with sheer force of will (I don’t think The Reader would have been able to work with anyone else as the lead; it barely did with her). But most of those projects have some subtlety to them or something to say. The Regime, by contrast, is mostly style over substance, and at least in the first episode there isn’t much in the way of style. The performances are generally superb but that’s true of even the HBO limited series that are flawed (see Night Country). White House Plumbers, the closest comparison, did have a deeper story to tell underneath the bizarre and often comic flaws. The Regime, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have any story to tell, at least not yet.

If you’re willing to embrace both the madness of the story and the brilliance of Winslet gone wild, you may very well love The Regime. But right now the HBO project this reminds me the most of so far is not Mare of Easttown or the first season of The White Lotus but rather, sadly, Night Country. If anything, I’m more inclined to think less of The Regime because as I said after everything I had been through with True Detective my expectations were not that high for Night Country. I had higher ones for The Regime and so far, they haven’t been met.

I intend to stick with The Regime for the future, because of the presence of Winslet. But whether they last may depend on the kind of projects I see as March progresses: there are quite a few series opposing it that I may find more interesting. I’m sorry Elena. I can bless you, the show’s another story.

My score: 2.5 stars.