The Regime | Series | Telescope Film
The Regime

The Regime

Critic Rating

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  • United Kingdom,
  • United States
  • 2024
  • · 1 season
  • · 50m

Creator Will Tracy
Cast Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillaume Gallienne, Andrea Riseborough, Danny Webb, Henry Goodman
Genre Comedy, Drama

Elena Vernham is the chancellor of an unnamed Central European country struggling with unrest and economic issues. Surrounded by scheming advisors, treacherous foreign actors and an unruly populace, Vernham turns to Zubak, a soldier implicated in a violent scandal, to become one of her most trusted confidants.

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What are critics saying?

100

Decider by Meghan O'Keefe

It’s a bleak look at the ways in which power corrupts, seduces, and seesaws that will leave you howling in laughter and twitching in discomfort in the same breath. .... The Regime is a twisted triumph.

90

The Daily Beast by Coleman Spilde

Those looking for Succession-style density here will have to keep searching. But that doesn’t mean that The Regime isn’t clever. This is one of the most shrewd and unexpected affairs that HBO has pursued in a moment, and under the rule of Winslet’s manic genius, audiences should flock to its wacky wits in droves.

80

Variety by Alison Herman

“The Regime” has a keen eye for the aesthetics of fascism, from an absurd woman-of-the-people photoshoot in a cabbage patch to Eurovisionesque extravaganzas. Just because these spectacles are laughably tacky doesn’t mean they’re without menace. And in the psychosexual folie à deux between Vernham and Zubak, there’s a canny use of infatuation as a metaphor for a cult of personality.

80

Wall Street Journal by John Anderson

Authoritarian shadows aside, “The Regime” is also supremely entertaining, much of the credit going to Ms. Winslet.

75

The A.V. Club by Manuel Betancourt

Above all, HBO’s latest series, The Regime, is about the joys of watching one of her generation’s greatest actors chewing scenery with gusto as a power-hungry, germaphobe of a stateswoman eager to make sure her vanity and her ambitions (both for herself and for her country) are in fine alignment as she navigates increased tensions within and abroad.

75

The Playlist by Brian Tallerico

The final episode, in particular, feels rushed, as if Tracy had a bunch of new ideas to explore and not enough time to do so. Having said that, “The Regime” is never boring, and the first few episodes are as sharply written as anything that’s been on HBO for a long time.

72

TV Guide by Allison Picurro

If The Regime is rarely as funny as a zippy satire should be (it doesn't have a ton of actual jokes, and the comedy is often met with more of an exhale-through-your-nose acknowledgement than an actual laugh), it's the delicious push and pull of that relationship that keeps you watching.

70

The New York Times by James Poniewozik

Her [Elena's] performance is magnetic; the satire less confident. The story hurtles through a year of chaos, and the ride turns shakier when the tone shifts to straight dramatic thriller. The series feels leery of engaging with the ugly, xenophobic aspects of modern autocracy. It is more comfortable as the story of a demented ruler than a depraved ideology.

70

Time by Judy Berman

The Regime is a lot of skillfully produced fun, but it never delivers the shrewd political commentary its premise could support. It’s less a satire than a farce—more The Menu than Succession.

70

Arizona Republic by Bill Goodykoontz

It’s plenty good — Winslet is never going to disappoint — but it’s not at the level of Iannucci’s work.