There’s a Problem With HBO’s New Political Satire, and It’s Not Kate Winslet

Set mainly in an opulent luxury hotel recently commandeered to serve as the headquarters for a corrupt Central European chancellor, Will Tracy’s HBO miniseries The Regime brings to banana republics the same insight and sophistication his 2022 movie The Menu brought to the world of contemporary gastronomy—which is to say, not much. Kate Winslet goes all out as the imaginary nation’s Elena Vernham, a neurotic hypochondriac whose delusions can have real and destabilizing, even deadly, results. But the show doesn’t match her vigor or her inventiveness.

It doesn’t help that, opening on a mousy Andrea Riseborough hustling up a marble staircase, The Regime immediately begs comparison to the work of Armando Iannucci—think of it as diet The Death of Stalin. Tracy may be coming off of Succession, but his latest work shares more in common with the Iannucci-created Veep (including executive producer Frank Rich). The notable difference here is that Elena, unlike the ineffectual Selina Meyer, has the power to subject an entire country to her narcissistic whims. There’s no evidence of the toxic mold that she’s convinced has spread throughout the palace, but construction crews are tearing it apart all the same, while her council of terrified advisers make believe they’re choking on it, too.

Winslet has rarely played a part this intensely comic, but she tears into it with gusto, pursing her lips into a diagonal slash when Elena is befuddled or displeased. The first couple of episodes, when the action is largely confined to the palace itself, play out mainly as a frenzied farce, with anxious functionaries, including Elena’s husband, Nicholas (Guillaume Gallienne), scuttling about as they try to carry out her wishes without attracting her notice. (At one point, the building is filled with bowls of steaming spuds, as Elena has determined that the cure for her ailments is to “unlock the ancient power of the potato.”) But there’s a hint of bloodshed to come in the newest member of her retinue, a soldier named Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts). The fact that he’s known as “the Butcher” for his part in the massacre of a group of striking coal miners doesn’t faze Elena; in fact, she specifically requested “a Site 5 boy.”

Herbert’s initial duties are innocuous, mostly scanning rooms for excess moisture so Elena knows whether they’re safe to enter, but he quickly maneuvers himself into a position of real power. Although Elena would sooner die than breathe the same air as them, she’s obsessed with holding the hearts of her country’s working poor—the ones who, in her periodic radio addresses, she refers to as “my loves.” In Herbert, she finds a particularly attractive specimen of the common man, one whose preference for actions—especially violent ones—over words makes for a thrilling contrast with the mealy-mouthed members of her cabinet. They, she confides in her plummy upper-crust accent, don’t understand “the common shits like us.”

Elena believes that Herbert is her pipeline to “what the nobodies want,” but she doesn’t like his answers, particularly the ones that involve returning the national assets that she’s appropriated for herself. As an abstract, “the people” validate her ability to exercise her will regardless of the niceties of governmental procedure. As individuals within speaking range, those people have desires and demands that clash with her aversion to any kind of oversight. She’s not much better with those she ought to coddle, like the American industrialists whose exploitation of the country’s natural resources line her pockets, or the U.S. senator (Martha Plimpton) sent to gently warn her that her impulsive decisions risk destabilizing the entire region. Elena knows the smart thing is to play ball with the U.S.—which, she points out, isn’t above overlooking the occasional massacre as long as its interests are served. But she’s so overcome with resentment that she treats a diplomatic envoy like one of her easily bullied underlings, locking her in a room alone with the Butcher, whose mere presence is so menacing he doesn’t have to make any overt threats.

The Regime grows darker along the way (there are six episodes in total), as Elena’s hold on power becomes shakier and the lengths to which she goes to protect it become more extreme. But the satire is blunted by the series’ generic setting and the vagueness of its ideas, not to mention the way it lets global superpowers like the U.S. and China off the hook for supporting repressive regimes and fostering dysfunctional political climates. Winslet’s performance is so titanic, and the series so centered on her character, that you come away with the impression that her country’s pitiful state is primarily a function of her personality, and not the influence of political and economic forces that dwarf even her absolute power. It leaves us thankful we don’t live in a country like hers, rather than feeling implicated in the role countries like ours play in making those the way they are.