The Great Is Political Satire At Its Worst.

This can’t be that bad, can it?

Most of you are probably aware of the fact that I am a huge fan of history-focused stories and comedy, so I was excited to see what Hulu would do with The Great. Right from the start, I knew that it would be a twisted take on the life of Catherine the Great, so I was intrigued to see how Tony McNamara would blend the history of Russia with modern jokes and political ideas. After all, it can’t be that hard to play around with some history and create an interesting story about the rise of an important world figure, right?

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the writing team understands what it was even trying to do. The Great seems great at first, but it quickly falls apart under the tiniest bit of thought.

So, it’s not all that great. Let’s dispense with the usual format and ask a very important question.

What Is Political Satire?

Satire can make people laugh, but it should also make them think.

For those of you who aren’t in the know, satire is a form of comedy that uses exaggeration, ridicule, and absurdity as a tool to generate insight into some sort of subject matter. The political variant is a branch that focuses its ire on political leaders and government screw-ups, so it can be used wisely in the hands of a master like Armando Iannucci.

In fact, let’s demonstrate that point by comparing The Great to The Thick of It!

If you haven’t seen it, dear reader, The Thick of It is a rather straightforward show that satirizes some of the supposed screw-ups in the governments of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron. Most of the time, the show follows “Labour” Comms Director Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) as he tries to clean up the mess of the week, and any viewer with half a brain can see the parallels between the rageohol-fueled antics of Tucker and work of real spin doctors like Alastair Campbell.

The show is not exact and might be a little out of date today, but viewers can get some interesting ideas out of it because of the parallels involved.

Unfortunately, The Great tosses a winning formula out the window in favor of an “occasionally true” story about how men are bad. Catherine (Elle Fanning) is an upstart liberal, Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) is a boorish conservative pig, and she wants to overthrow him. After all, our nations will be even greater than before if we just give peace a chance and yank power away from those toxically masculine men, right?

Actually, the real history of Peter III and Catherine has very little to do with that, but we’ll get to that later!

Do The Jokes Land?

We get it. Velementov is fat. You’ve told us that a bazillion times!

Okay, The Great is not so great at what it set out to do, but will it make people laugh?

Not necessarily.

Sure, some of the set pieces are kind of goofy, but the writers did their show a disservice by utterly steamrolling the Rule of Three. To show you what I mean, let’s consider genitalia jokes, which have been around since Shakespeare.

Most of the time, good writers do not try to ram it in more than three times, which serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it provides an easy way to experiment with various techniques that will leave people gagging. On the other, the joke doesn’t last so long that it produces fake noises and a desire to get some sleep.

Sadly, The Great repeats the same jokes over and over and over again across every single episode of the first season, which distracts attention from any original bit that might be in there.

What If?

Who led Russia into multiple wars again?

In my opinion, The Great could have been an interesting show if it focused on satirizing the idea that everything will automatically be better if a woman is put in charge.

Why do I say that? Consider the following!

Earlier in the article, I mentioned that the show makes a broad assertion that men are boorish monsters and women are enlightened peacemakers. However, history paints a far blurrier picture than the one portrayed on Hulu. A cursory examination of basic sources shows that McNamara and the other writers almost completely switched the personalities of Peter III and Catherine the Great.

While Peter was a product of his time, he made several pro-peasant reforms, encouraged religious freedom, and withdrew Russia from the Seven Years’ War because he liked Frederick the Great. In other words, his dovish foreign policy and semi-liberalism at home systematically pissed off every major institution of power in Russia and gave his wife an opening to kill him. That sounds awfully different from the image that we’re getting with this show, and it’s rather ironic when one considers that the writers also made a statement about how the first lie often wins the day.

Of course, the very thought of a politically incorrect satire like this one would’ve gotten Tony McNamara branded as double-plus-ungood and tossed out of Hollywood on his ears, but it’s hard to deny that it could’ve reflected history in a funny way.

Conclusion.

These hunts are kind of goofy, but everything else overshadows them.

The Great doesn’t work. While Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, and the rest of the cast give it their all, viewers aren’t going to learn anything, the jokes are repetitive to the extreme, and there is no deep insight to be had in any given episode. Whether you’re a writer or a viewer, you’ll almost certainly get more entertainment value and insight from The Thick of It, Jonathan Pie, Titania McGrath, or any of the other masterful works that can be found out there.