The Great

While apparently even historically inaccurate compared to an old Marlene Dietrich movie, The Great is a fantastically entertaining piece of nonsense with Elle Fanning giving a quirky, very funny performance as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult giving a funny, infuriating one as Peter (also a shout out to Phoebe Fox's snarky servant).

The series is consistently entertaining, generally funny, sometimes shocking or horrific, and often just plain nuts. Catherine is an interesting character, both smart and foolish, both strategic and inept, but always moving forward with a blind, frequently insane determination. She's not always sympathetic, and her mistakes are costly, but she's never less than fascinating.

The last episode is a little confusing, and ends on a cliffhanger which doesn't help, but overall the series is wonderful and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out in the next season.

First off, the good; Great writing, acting, sets... extremely entertaining. Fun even. Well above average.

The bad; Was there anything here historically accurate beyond a Russian emperor named Catherine that took over and ruled Russia? I didn't see much. And so much of the inaccuracy was pointless and unnecessary... like Peter's father died when he was quite young, and he wasn't Peter the Great. It was his grandfather. And it doesn't stop there... For those of us who enjoy History and historical fiction, it was a bit odd and detracted from the immersion.

The profanity; I'm no prude and have no issues with the F bomb, but some of the later episodes had dialogue where it was nearly every other word. Again, this detracts from the immersion. It's jarring.

Political correctness; I have no issues with multi cultural actors. It is called acting for a reason. But painting an empire that had already had female leaders as some sort of boy's club that needed saving by idealistic young Catherine? Not even close to real, and again, slightly annoying. Catherine was a tomboy, loved horses, shooting, hunting, etc. She was not a dainty little thing dreaming about art and education. That movement had already been started in Russia years earlier, some of which was expanded by Peter, and some subsequently rescinded by Catherine.

I did like the way they explained the old gossip about her sleeping with her horse. Clever, and could very likely be what happened in reality.

With just a bit more effort in the writing to be true to History and the actual characters, this could've easily been a 9 or 10. I'm not expecting 100% accuracy, but something higher than 5% would've been nice.

This has been one of the best shows of the year. I binged watched it over the weekend and it was great. It is loosely based on history but has an entertaining twist and the ending cries for a second season. Elle Fanning does a great job as well as the other characters. Some you immediately like, some you hate but all of them grow on you as the season progresses.

So just to get this out of the way: this show is anything but historically accurate. If you want one more like that, Russia-1's Ekaterina is like that.

But anyways, if you really want to find this show incredibly funny, read up on the history of Catherine the Great.

Also, to the person who did the editing for Season 1 Episode 8, why would you use "The Sacred War"?! I know historical accuracy wasn't on the table, but for gods sake don't intentionally mix up the eras (The Sacred War was written in 1941).

The way how they play and remastering the history is genius! As being Russian, I find this show absurdly brilliant and funny. That's interesting to follow how the show is portraying current narratives with well known facts from 18 century, as it all together creates absolutely masterpiece satire Universe!