Christian Black/Hulu
Deliberately ahistorical period pieces are generally empty and useless (I’m looking your way, Bridgerton), since they obscure rather than reveal the truth about our pasts and ourselves.
Nonetheless, The Great is the exception to that reliable rule, as Tony McNamara’s manic Hulu hit employs its inaccurate vision of 18th-century Russia for delightfully daffy comedy that speaks directly to the issues at the heart of its, and our, era. It’s yesteryear reimagined as a theater of the absurd, and all the more winning for the way in which its ridiculousness is rooted in enduring personal, social, and political dynamics.
When last we left The Great, which returns May 12 on Hulu, Russian empress Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) had just tried to kill her husband Peter III (Nicholas Hoult), only to learn that her knife had repeatedly penetrated his body double Pugachev (also Hoult)—at which point Peter had walked in on the scene and discovered his wife’s intentions.