The Great

From its very first episode, this show announced itself as having no interest in accuracy. Each episode opened with the subtitle “An Occasionally True Story,” and creator Tony McNamara, who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated film The Favourite, leaned into that premise with everything he had. Premiering on Hulu in 2020, the series follows a fictionalized Catherine the Great as she arrives in Russia to marry Emperor Peter III and gradually plots to overthrow him. Over three seasons and 30 episodes, it turned that premise into one of the sharpest comedies on streaming television.

Audience reception was enthusiastic from the beginning. Fans consistently pointed to the show’s wit, its willingness to be vulgar and smart in the same breath, and the performances at its center as reasons to keep watching. The show earned multiple Emmy nominations across its run, including Outstanding Lead Actress and Lead Actor nods for both leads. When Hulu cancelled it after three seasons in 2023, the reaction from its fanbase was vocal and unhappy. This was a show that people loved fiercely, even if the audience never grew as large as it deserved.

Criticism that does exist tends to focus on the same issue: beneath all the brilliance, does the show have enough going on? It’s a fair question, and one that each viewer will answer differently depending on how much they value style over structure.

Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, and the Chemistry That Fuels Everything

Everything about this show lives and dies on the dynamic between its two leads, and that dynamic is electric. Elle Fanning plays Catherine as a woman whose idealism keeps crashing into the reality of a court that runs on cruelty, corruption, and stupidity. Fanning brings intelligence and ferocity to the role while also selling Catherine’s moments of naivety and self-doubt. Her performance matures across the three seasons in ways that feel organic, shifting from wide-eyed reformer to pragmatic ruler without losing the core of the character.

Nicholas Hoult’s Peter is the show’s secret weapon. On paper, the character is a monster: vain, violent, ignorant, and casually cruel. Hoult plays him with such charisma and comic timing that Peter becomes unexpectedly compelling, even sympathetic, without the show ever pretending he’s a good person. The contrast between Peter’s surface confidence and the childlike insecurity underneath gives Hoult layers to work with, and he mines every one of them. By the second season, the relationship between Catherine and Peter had evolved into something deeply complicated, a push-pull between two people who understand each other better than anyone else in the palace and still can’t figure out whether they’re enemies or something else entirely.

A strong supporting cast fills the court with distinctive personalities. Phoebe Fox as Marial, Catherine’s cynical advisor, delivers some of the show’s best one-liners with bone-dry precision. Sacha Dhawan, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, and Gwilym Lee all bring texture to their roles, creating a palace full of people whose schemes and desires intersect in entertaining ways. The ensemble gives the show depth beyond its central couple.

McNamara’s writing deserves credit for maintaining a consistent comedic voice across 30 episodes without becoming repetitive. The humor operates at multiple levels: broad physical comedy, razor-sharp verbal sparring, and a dark wit that finds absurdity in violence and institutional dysfunction. The dialogue is quotable in the way that the best comedies manage, where lines stick because they’re both funny and true.

The Great’s Pacing Problem

For all its strengths, The Great sometimes struggles to sustain momentum across full seasons. Each season runs ten episodes at roughly an hour each, and not every episode has enough story to justify that runtime. Middle stretches can sag, with subplots that circle without advancing and scenes that feel padded. The show is at its best when its characters are in direct conflict or when the plot is building toward a specific event. In the gaps between those peaks, it can feel like the series is stalling.

McNamara’s anti-historical approach also creates a tension that not every viewer will enjoy. By explicitly detaching from real events, McNamara freed himself to write whatever served the story. The result is often thrilling and unpredictable. But it also means the show lacks the structural backbone that historical drama typically provides. Without real events to build toward, certain storylines feel like they’re inventing obstacles just to fill time, and the stakes can feel artificial when the audience knows the show will bend history whenever convenient.

Some characters suffer from this looseness more than others. Later seasons introduced arcs that didn’t always land, with certain supporting players pushed in directions that felt inconsistent with their earlier development. The show was generally good at managing its ensemble, but the occasional misstep stood out more sharply against the otherwise high caliber of the writing.

Its humor, too, has a specific register that won’t work for everyone. The show leans heavily on anachronistic vulgarity, and while the joke usually lands, there are moments where crudeness substitutes for wit rather than complementing it. Those moments are infrequent, but they represent the show at its laziest.

An Occasionally True Story About Power and Compromise

A single thread runs through all three seasons: the question of what reform actually costs. Catherine arrives in Russia believing she can change the country through intelligence and moral clarity. The show’s central tension isn’t whether she’ll succeed but what she’ll have to become in the process. Each season forces her to make compromises that erode her idealism, and Fanning plays those shifts with a specificity that keeps the arc from feeling like a simple corruption narrative.

That theme gives the comedy unexpected weight. The funniest scenes in The Great are often the ones where the gap between how the characters see themselves and how they actually behave is widest. Peter fully believes he’s a great ruler. Catherine fully believes she can transform Russia without getting her hands dirty. The show finds its richest comedy in the space between those delusions and reality.

Should You Watch The Great?

If you enjoyed The Favourite and wished it were ten hours longer, The Great is exactly what you’re looking for. Fans of historical satire, dark comedy, and shows built around outstanding lead performances will find plenty to love. It rewards viewers who appreciate writing that’s both funny and thematically ambitious, even when the execution doesn’t always match the ambition.

Skip it if you want historical accuracy or if you find that broad humor mixed with violence puts you off. The show makes no apologies for its vulgarity, and anyone expecting a traditional period drama will be caught off guard immediately. If you need your comedy to stay within certain boundaries of taste, this one will test those boundaries early and often.

The Verdict on The Great

The Great is a gleefully irreverent take on Catherine the Great’s rise to power, carried by two lead performances that elevate every scene they inhabit. Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult have the kind of on-screen chemistry that makes you forget you’re watching actors, and Tony McNamara’s writing is sharp enough to make the absurdity of 18th-century Russian court politics feel fresh and funny across three seasons. The show occasionally struggles with pacing in its middle stretches, and its commitment to anti-historical chaos can leave viewers wanting more substance beneath the wit. Those who connect with its wavelength will find one of the most entertaining period shows of the 2020s, and one that was cancelled before it ran out of ideas.