After the menu, tap “The Regime”. I'm not referring to the diet that many of us go on after eating, but to the miniseries “The Regime” by Will Tracy, screenwriter of “Succession,” “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” and the aforementioned film, in which a couple travels to a family island to enjoy a special gastronomic experience.
The regime (HBO Max) is not about switching off, as a fitness trainer once recommended to me as the main exercise to get a flat stomach again. Or, well, it will shut up, but in a different sense, since it tells of the vicissitudes of an autocracy that has fallen into disrepair in a fictional country in Central Europe. The bully is Kate Winslet. And of course, many of us eat anything, whatever, as a main course.
The problem is that when you watch “The Regime,” you don’t know what you’re eating. It is supposed to be a political satire, but today, when political reality is full of parodies without the need to be filtered by a screenwriter, satires have to work hard to be more biting and sophisticated than the menu the newspaper serves us every day. The regime is general and vague in its criticism and cannot find its tone. It aims to portray unbalanced, stupid and interested characters, but it seems to forget that the perspective from which to tell it cannot be as vulgar as that of the protagonists, no matter how stupid the hands in which we sometimes fall devices.
It's not even original to put a much-loved star in the role of a villain at the head of a dystopian country: we already enjoyed Emma Thompson in Years and Years. And after seven happy seasons of “Veep,” having a woman play the lead role in a political satire doesn’t make any difference. The more I see of The Regime, the more I miss Armando Iannucci, who also made us laugh with his analysis of the paranoia before the overthrow of a dictator in The Death of Stalin.
It's surprising that the series is so lazy from someone involved in the show that best dissects current events from the comedy, John Oliver's weekly half-hour. And it's sad that so many good ingredients – directed by Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs, the cast also includes Hugh Grant and Martha Plimpton, and the soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat – don't make for a good menu.
You can follow EL PAÍS Television on X or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Get the TV newsletter
All the latest news from broadcasters and platforms, with interviews, news and analyses, as well as recommendations and reviews from our journalists
LOG IN
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_