If the upcoming HBO political satire The Regime, starring Kate Winslet as the chancellor of a fictional European autocracy, had gone to any other streaming service, I don’t think I would be as excited as I am to check it out. Ditto if it also didn’t hail from the producers of Succession, and if it wasn’t co-directed by Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs (whose previous director credits include the movie High Fidelity and the Netflix series The Crown, respectively).
The six-episode limited series, coming to HBO on March 3, tracks one year inside the palace walls of Winslet’s tightly controlled central European regime. It’s the kind of show that I think will definitely appeal to fans of something like The Crown or Veep, although The Regime looks considerably darker.
Written by showrunner Will Tracy, the show “tells the story of one year within the walls of the palace of a modern European regime as it begins to unravel.” That makes The Regime sort of like a totalitarian version of The Crown — heavy is the head that wears it and all, whether we’re talking about a Windsor or Winslet’s steely chancellor whose rule is threatened by domestic turmoil. “When I became your chancellor, I did so with a heavy heart,” Winslet’s head of state muses at one point in HBO’s newly released trailer, against the backdrop of an ominous soundtrack.
“But just know, you fill me with all the love I’ll ever need. And so I bless you all, and I bless our love. Always.”
In addition to Winslet, the cast here includes Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillaume Gallienne, Andrea Riseborough, Martha Plimpton and Hugh Grant. In the teaser trailer, Winslet’s character grows increasingly paranoid and seems to feel as though her power is slipping through her fingers. “You’re here because you’re a nobody,” she tells a soldier, played by Schoenaerts, who she elevates to be her right hand. “And that means I can trust you.”
Let the palace intrigue begin.
