Set primarily in an opulent luxury hotel recently commandeered as headquarters for a corrupt Central European chancellor, Will Tracy's HBO miniseries “The Regime” brings to the banana republics the same insight and sophistication as his 2022 film “The Menu.” has brought into the world of contemporary gastronomy – namely, not much. Kate Winslet gives her best performance as the Imaginary Nation's Elena Vernham, a neurotic hypochondriac whose delusions can have real and destabilizing, even fatal, consequences. But the show doesn't match her energy or inventiveness.
It doesn't help that “The Regime” immediately invites comparison to the work of Armando Iannucci – think of it like “The Death of Stalin.” Tracy may be coming from Succession, but his latest effort has more in common with the Iannucci-created Veep (including executive producer Frank Rich). The notable difference is that, unlike the ineffectual Selina Meyer, Elena has the power to bend an entire country to her narcissistic whims. There's no evidence that they think the toxic mold has spread throughout the palace, but the construction crews tear it apart anyway, while their council of frightened advisors pretend to choke on it too.
Winslet has rarely played such an overly funny role, but she throws herself into it with gusto, curling her lips into a diagonal line when Elena is confused or dissatisfied. The first few episodes, in which the action is largely confined to the palace itself, play out mostly as a frenzied farce, with concerned officials, including Elena's husband Nicholas (Guillaume Gallienne), scurrying around trying to fulfill their desires outside the palace caught her attention. (At one point, the building is filled with bowls of steaming potatoes, as Elena has decided that the cure for her ailments is to “unleash the ancient power of the potato.”) But there's a hint of bloodshed in the newest member from her entourage a soldier named Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts). The fact that he is known as “the Butcher” for his involvement in the massacre of a group of striking miners doesn’t bother Elena; In fact, she specifically requested “a Site 5 boy.”
Herbert's initial tasks are innocuous, mostly scanning rooms for excessive moisture so Elena knows whether it's safe to enter, but he quickly maneuvers himself into a position of real power. Although Elena would rather die than breathe the same air as her, she is obsessed with holding the hearts of her country's working poor – those she refers to as “my dear ones” in her regular radio addresses. In Herbert, she finds a particularly attractive example of the common man, whose preference for actions – especially violent ones – over words provides an exciting contrast to the bad-natured members of her cabinet. They, she admits in her clumsy upper-class accent, don't understand “the common shits like us.”
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Elena believes that Herbert is her path to “what the nobodies want,” but she doesn't like his answers, especially those that involve returning the state assets she appropriated. In short, “The People” affirms their ability to exercise their will regardless of the intricacies of the governing process. As individuals in the speaking area, these people have desires and demands that conflict with their aversion to any kind of supervision. She doesn't do much better with those she's supposed to coddle, like the American industrialists whose exploitation of the country's natural resources lines her pockets, or the U.S. Senator (Martha Plimpton) sent to gently warn her that their impulsive decisions risk destabilizing the entire region. Elena knows it's smart to play along with the US – which, she points out, is not afraid to ignore the occasional massacre as long as its interests are served. But she's so annoyed that she treats a diplomatic envoy like one of her easily bullied subordinates, locking her in a room alone with the Butcher, whose very presence is so menacing that he doesn't need to make overt threats.
The regime becomes increasingly sinister over time (there are six episodes in total) as Elena's grip on power becomes more and more uncertain and the lengths she goes to to protect it become more and more extreme. But the satire is tempered by the series' generic framework and the vagueness of its ideas, not to mention the way it lets global superpowers like the US and China get away with supporting repressive regimes and fostering a dysfunctional political climate. Winslet's performance is so gigantic and the series focuses so much on her character that one gets the impression that the sorry state of her country is primarily a result of her personality and not the influence of political and economic forces that exercise her absolute power put in the shadows. It makes us grateful that we don't live in a country like theirs, rather than feeling implicated in the role that countries like ours play in making them what they are.