Catherine the Great premiere review: An Empress rises

HBO’s lavish new period drama Catherine the Great begins as the new Empress consolidates her allies and realizes she doesn’t have to share her power with anyone.

As a general life rule: If Dame Helen Mirren is playing royalty in a period drama – that’s probably something you should watch. Such is the case with Catherine the Great, HBO’s latest lush period drama in the vein of recent prestige Monday night fare such as Gentleman Jack and Chernobyl.

Here, Mirren stars as the infamous Empress Catherine II of Russia, a role that allows her to embody the boss woman in charge she was always meant to play, while sporting amazing costumes and making out with younger men.

Dream role? Dream role.

The story opens in the immediate aftermath of Catherine’s ascension to power at the end of a coup which overthrew her husband Peter III. (Peter, for the record, was kind of nondescript and uninteresting, historically speaking, and clearly married way above himself.) Catherine herself is German, but she’s lived In Russia since her teenage years, taught herself to speak the language and is basically all sorts of in love with the country that’s become her home. Some of her subjects are cool with this; some not.

Similarly, some of her subject are equally cool with being ruled by a woman, and some are not. Luckily, Catherine is definitely the sort of woman who doesn’t have time for anyone’s trash behavior.

Most of the series’ premiere is devoted to identifying who most of Catherine the Great’s major players are, though they all have the sort of complicated, hard-to-spell names that you’re never going to remember without the closed captioning on.

But that’s Russia for you, I guess.

Mostly, you just need to know that a lot of dudes feel like Catherine owes them something because they helped put her on the Russian throne. There’s Count Orlov, her cranky boyfriend, who is mad Catherine won’t marry him and make him Emperor even though she’s been very clear about her relationship boundaries more than once. Her idiot son Paul is next in line for the Russian throne, but apparently can’t help hoping his mom kicks it or steps down soon, even though is a crown she spilled blood to get. And then there’s her number 1 assistant, who is played by Rory Kinnear and has one of those names I can’t remember.

He does, for what it’s worth, seem to have Catherine’s best interests at heart, generally speaking, and is willing to tell her hard truths. However, Rory Kinnear also comes off as slimy af, and is way attached to Idiot Paul. Maybe he’s just working on his job security, but his generally smarminess is pretty hard to ignore.

Finally, there’s Gregori Potemkin, a hot young military officer that has taken a shine to Catherine, and the feeling is very mutual, despite the fact that she’s got a live-in boyfriend at present. (Don’t worry, Orlov gets ejected from the royal chamber by the end of the episode, so it’s all fine.) He is one of the few lurking men who don’t seem to want anything from Catherine, nor does he seem to want to tell her what to do, so that’s probably a big part of his charm.

Most of this episode centers around Catherine claiming her power, and asserting her right to make her own decisions free of the considerations and constraints of others. She’s busy writing speeches denouncing slavery and encouraging the formation of laws that both protect and apply to rich and poor in equal measure. But she’s also busy dropping warnings left and right to those that try and oppose her, and eventually, she has to openly display her strength by letting a few of the folks who want to challenge her die.

“Do you know what I hold in my hand? Absolute power. Do you have any idea what that means?” she says at one point.

And let’s be real, a lot of these guys clearly do not.

Catherine seems genuinely saddened that Prisoner No. 1, a mentally challenged Ivan VI who has been driven mad by years of confinement, must die to keep her throne secure. She’s less upset when, later in the episode, she has to have one of her most strident enemies beheaded for treason, and she’s not afraid to have his death warrant read out from under her own hand.

This is an Empress who may be newly come to her throne, but she understands how the game of politics is played – and how many men are waiting in the wings to seize the power she has, because they don’t think she deserves it. She knows that she cannot display an iota of weakness, yet she herself is also a person who desires affection, friendship and fun.

Mirren is, unsurprisingly, magnetic and turns in a performance that’s often better than some of the dialogue she gets along the way. Her Catherine is someone we can all believe can both build and command an empire, and it’s certainly going to be fun to watch her work.

Catherine the Great airs Mondays at 10pm on HBO.