Le Régime

My Review- HBO streaming Foxtel The Regime - Streaming on Foxtel My Rating 6/10

The Regime is billed as a Political satire which it certainly is , however for me it's more of a slapstick comedy than clever satire.

It's worth a look just for the brilliance of Oscar winner Kate Winslet's performance as the witless narcissist Chancellor Elena Vernham who rules like a dictator on speed an unnamed Central European principality .

Elena is quite unhinged even seeking instructions from her mummified father when the proverbial "S"hits the fan.

The unnamed kingdom is centred in a vague location between Switzerland and Germany and its deprived citizens mine plutonium while their leader and their corrupt government live in luxury ,an all too familiar story.

Kate Winslet obviously had great fun filming The Regime and has great comedy timing .

I admired the way she kept up Elenas's lisp impediment throughout the series plus her occasional singing on the local television station to entertain her people at Yuletide.

The Regime actually gets quite dark toward the conclusion as Chancellor Elena's empire begins to crumble and the rebels stage a coup.

Matthias Schoenaerts is also very impressive as the Rasputin like villain Corporal Herbert Zubak who mesmerises Elena with his charms and mysterious health remedies after he helps her surrogate son Oskar who suffers from seizures.

The other impressive cast member is Andrea Riseborough who plays Oskar's birth mother Agnes and personal assistant to Elena she is straight faced and dour throughout but adds real substance to a fractured plot.

This 6 part series In my opinion may have worked more effectively as a feature movie at times it reminded me of Wes Anderson's brilliant 2014 movie The Grand Budapest Hotel .

However this series for me was a bit of a drawn out farce lasting far too long .

The team of writers headed by series creator Will Tracy who wrote The Menu and 3 episodes of Succession which I think are both brilliant I thought lost their way a little in this romp comedy.

Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs directed 3 episodes each and I think maybe that's one reason that for me it lost its way for me .

Let's just say I'm glad I watched The Regime for the ensemble performances especially Kate Winslett.

All the other reviews apparently completely missed the point of this show. One must assume that they probably never heard of, and certainly never had to deal with, the Nikolai Ceausescu regime. Winslett captures the mercurial insanity of Romania's long-time dictator, with the kow-towing sycophants that surrounded him, the ostentatious palace, the complete and paranoiac disregard for the people and economy of the country. It will be interesting to see if it gets even more absurd in upcoming episodes, mirroring the murderous ego-centric eccentricities of that megalomaniac. In fact, it is about time someone mocked him.

This was a series with so much potential. Funny, no - at least I never found anything to laugh at, but satire does not need to be side splittingly hilarious.

I would have loved to see more of Andrea Riseborough. I thought she was one of the more interesting parts of the series, but it was not to be. What happened to the child? Throughout the entire 6th episode Kate Winslett's character does not enquire about him once. Even for a megalomaniac that is quite something.

I seem to be one of the few that did not take to the "butcher". I found her fascination with him quite baffling.

I agree with those who think that Kate Winslett had too much screen time to the detriment of the other characters. Less is more. And this could have been so much more.

Based on the first episode I'm all in and look forward to the rest of series. Some critics say it isn't funny. I guess that depends on one's particular brand of humor. There are levels and genres of humor. The Regime certainly isn't laugh out loud hilarious and I don't know why anyone expected it to be based on the trailers. Our main character is a very quirky, eccentric woman who believes she is righteous in all she does but has a paranoia of mold. Well, so do I, even if not to her degree. In this episode we learn that her father died of lung disease so it stands to reason she'd be scared and to the degree she is scared is the funny part. Kate Winslet delivers in spades and she gets better every time I watch her. She has the capacity in The Regine to garner sympathy while just having brow beaten one of her staff. It's kooky!

Heavy satire, talking about a "democratic" regime in a fictional country, which LOVES freedom and celebrates Love with prisons, opinion monitoring to combat misinformation.

Kate Winslet is perfect on the role, she has charisma, and sound crazy, but you can't hate her. Good cast around her and she is a star.

Hope the next episodes keep the same tone of mockery, love what the writers did

People that agree with the the way the world is heading, won't like this series for sure. Since they don't have that much sense of humor.

Hope the characters get the evolution and deepenest as they deserve, but for the first episode it was actually good.