Review: The Regime, "Victory Day" | Episode 1
HBO's latest limited series begins with a special relationship (and, yes, some tonal challenges)
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of HBO limited series The Regime. As always, the first review is available to all subscribers, but further coverage will be exclusively for paid subscribers. Yearly subscriptions are 20% off until 3/4, and you can read more about our Winter Schedule here.
From a scheduling standpoint here at Episodic Medium, the easiest decision has been foregrounding HBO’s Sunday dramas.
Mind you, this strategy has had its pitfalls: while I highly recommend Ben Rosenstock’s coverage of The Idol, its meager audience was a reminder that not every HBO drama is going to gain the same kind of traction. However, there is no ritual stronger among the likely audience for a newsletter trafficking in episodic recaps than watching whatever HBO puts on the air on Sundays, and so I’m usually inclined to put them on the schedule sight unseen.
The Regime is the latest of such series, and honestly all I really needed was the logline—six-episode limited series satirizing an autocratic regime starring Kate Winslet—to figure that it would be something that people would at the very least sample. But without access to screeners, I’ve watched as my critical colleagues have been decidedly mixed on the series. While I know the broader internet had its foibles with the very good True Detective: Night Country, it was noticeable that my critical colleagues who had seen all six episodes clearly felt the destination was worth the journey. The same has been less true for The Regime, which has its fans but has been criticized for its tonal imbalance and the shallowness of its satire (or so the headlines suggest, I’m not inclined to read pre-air reviews for shows I’ll be covering). And so when I sat down with tonight’s premiere, I started typing away my notes unsure of how the show and these reviews will sit with our audience.
My overall reaction to this premiere is that I don’t think this is going to become HBO’s next classic limited series. “Victory Day” has some striking scenes and a captivating central performance from Kate Winslet, but the worldbuilding lacks precision and focus to convince me to invest in this world or its characters. But at the same time, it still has that sheen of prestige that elevates it above a similarly scattered project elsewhere, and the magnetic pull of the HBO Sunday slot that keeps us coming back. And it’s definitely an example of a show that’s doing enough interesting things to be worth considering just why it might not be coalescing into the channel’s next Emmy juggernaut as opposed to just a shoe-in nomination for its star.
“Victory Day” is set up as an introduction to Elena Vernham (Winslet) and Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), an autocratic chancellor and a nobody corporal whose paths cross at a crucial point in their respective journeys. While the Chancellor fights imaginary spores and her father’s ghost, Zubak fights the demons inside his head, and the fact that everyone but the Chancellor is constantly calling attention to his role in the murder of protestors at a Cobalt mine, Site Five. Elena is the only person who tells Zubak that he’s a good man who deserves love, and he doesn’t stop to consider that it’s probably because she’s an autocrat who has had to believe the same for herself after she’s committed similar atrocities to gain and hold onto power. While there are a few bumps in the road, by episode’s end Zubak is Elena’s closest ally, the only person she trusts to tell her the truth about what the “nobodies” truly want.
This dynamic is the strongest part of The Regime at this early stage, as it’s able to explore Elena’s vulnerabilities and eccentricities in equal measure. We first meet Elena in the glow of television lights, but we quickly learn that her hypochondria has effectively crippled her ability to function, and that the version people see on TV is a front (albeit a well-honed one). Zubak literally stumbles dazedly into the Palace, initially as a surrogate for the audience who is witnessing the regime for the first time. However, that surrogacy dies when we get a clearer glimpse of his self-hate following his role in the murders at Site Five, and he gets a clearer glimpse of Elena’s insecurity when he struggles to navigate how to do his job of protecting her in the party space. The talk-sing performance of “If You Leave Me Now” is a product of a woman very aware of the power she holds in that room, but that also makes her hyper-aware of how Zubak’s well-intentioned warning about handshakes and information about the humidity undercut the authority she so desperately craves (and, given how she’s choosing to rule, needs).
There’s some procedural wonkiness in the transition from Zubak’s firing to his late night rescue in the palace—while there’s an “official” explanation for the man breaking into the palace by episode’s end, the incident mostly exists to push Elena deep into her hypochondria and bring Zubak to her side in the process. Where the show wants these characters to be is at the point where they truly believe there is no one else who understands what they are going through. The recurring discussion of dreams reinforces how neither character has any desire to live in the world as they see it—Elena’s insistence that what happens in their dreams is part of their evolving relationship is an effort to validate the fantasies she relies on to maintain power, while Zubak’s willingness to fuel that narrative comes from his desire to be more than nobody (but also not the somebody everyone else believes him to be). When he arrived at the palace, canted angles symbolized his disorientation, but by episode’s end he’s emerging from the shadows into the light of the same TV setup that illuminated Elena in the first act as they prepare to take on the world together.
It’s that “world” where The Regime fell a bit flat for me. Actually, that’s the wrong turn of phrase: I actually feel like the show’s topography is too chaotic for me to get a clear handle on what it wants to say using this relationship between the two characters. When Elena eventually turns the future of the country over to Zubak amidst her isolation, he gives an impassioned speech about how her cabinet is using her, inspiring her to frame her Finance Minister and physician for the “assassination attempt” as an excuse to depose them. There’s an element of interpersonal triumph in this moment: Zubak returns to the “dream” idea to suggest she’s the only one with true vision, and effectively cures her hypochondria (for now) in the process. But politically speaking, the decision to reject a U.S. cobalt mining deal and turn their backs on NATO needs some serious unpacking that the episode makes challenging.
The Regime defines its setting as “Middle Europe,” and is obviously working hard to push aside any direct comparisons. That said, we’re clearly meant to be wary of the way Elena and her party frame the events of “Victory Day” seven years earlier: the framing of Keplinger and his regime as “radicals” and “Neo-Marxist” thieves sets off many red flags, as does the way Elena’s speech strongly implies a forceful transfer of power in its language but nonetheless frames the takeover in democratic terms. And at least as far as we’ve seen, Elena is not simply a useful idiot within this regime—she may be easily distracted by her paranoia around her father’s lung condition, but she is not operating as any one person’s puppet such that we are meant to sympathize with her situation. She is, by all accounts, a direct extension of the regime she represents.
However, the cobalt deal with the U.S. that’s at the center of this plot works to generate greater sympathy for Elena’s position in a way that confused me a little. Obviously, I’ll be the first to observe the complicated role America’s colonial capitalism plays in our understanding of foreign affairs, and so the idea that the U.S. is trying to use this dictator for their own interests is hardly surprising. But the way that the representative of the U.S.—I didn’t catch who exactly he was supposed to be—tries to manipulate her into a bad deal that strips them of power was a little cartoony, and actually so much of that scene was weird. What was with Elena’s husband’s straight-faced retelling of their love story where he doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he was married, they had an affair, and then he only broke off that marriage because she told him to propose because it was good for their election campaign? While Elena and Zubak’s shared dream of sorts makes sense, I don’t know that the “satirical” world of this country is coherent enough to mean much of anything, and the parts of the episode most concerned with it were the parts that didn’t really work for me.
And yes, I’ll concur with my critical colleagues that the show’s tone is an issue throughout. I get it: there’s something inherently zany about authoritarianism when you’re deep in it like this, and I appreciate seeing Winslet explore ways to use her voice and mannerisms to find the humor and horror in this woman. I also thought the production design did a great job of finding light notes in both the grandeur of the palace and in its sanitation theater overhaul. But while it’s one thing for the show to explore the juxtaposition of kooky music and images of political unrest in the opening title sequence (which features a main title theme from Alexandre Desplat), the recurring musical cues that sound like Hans Zimmer’s Sherlock Holmes score drove me absolutely crazy as they bled into the show itself. It’s fine for Andrea Riseborough’s Agnes to throw out a quip or two, but putting that music over it is an unforced error, and showcased other moments throughout where it felt like we were missing some of the nuance the show was going for tone-wise.
By all accounts, I don’t think these reservations are going to go away: the issues critics observed with the show in screening The Regime seem baked into its very essence. None of them are dealbreakers for me, as a viewer—good performances and a basic investment in seeing how these two characters confront the challenge in front of them is enough to keep me tuning in for an hour a week, provided that the balance issues don’t become more exaggerated over time. And I suppose for a limited series like this one, that’s effectively the point of reading reviews like this one: we’re not building a foundation for future seasons, or solving a mystery. We’re just teasing out how our almost Pavlovian instinct to tune into HBO at 9pm eastern on Sundays is being tested by this latest effort, just as we’ll do in April when The Sympathizer takes over the slot. And unless no one opens the reviews in their inboxes and discussion dies and I need to fire myself, I’m excited to explore this relationship alongside our subscribers in the weeks ahead.
Stray observations
I’m surely not the only one who got big “Lenin Simpsons Tomb” vibes from her father’s resting place, right?
Riseborough’s Agnes seems to be Elena’s chief of staff, but we don’t really understand her deal yet: her whole “puss” runner with her husband didn’t add up to much, and we didn’t get a whole lot of insight into why it is that their son is Elena’s ward or something. Will be interesting to see how that gets unpacked as we move forward.
I know we can’t get too caught up in exactly what this English-speaking country in Middle Europe is, because it’s obviously just in English because it’s a TV show, but I do wonder how we’re meant to read her use of a Chicago song in her big performance, given she appears to have gone to medical school in France as opposed to in the U.S. Were Chicago big in France? Her husband plays keyboards? More questions than answers after that performance.
“Mood is a 5 out of 10”
“10 being good?”
“Does it matter if it’s 5?” This was fun banter, don’t get me wrong, but I did sort of wonder whether we needed it? And what are we meant to take away from it. Is the Veep vibe of the inner workings of the palace something we’ll become back to with the Spores Situation supposedly under control?As ever with a new series, these reviews are really about starting a conversation with subscribers—to join the conversation as either a reader or a commenter, become a paid subscriber. Until the end of the day tomorrow (3/4), yearly subscriptions are 20% off in honor of our second anniversary.
For me, the lack of specificity was the big problem. Satire works when it's specific. If you're satirizing an authoritarian, you need to actually engage with their authoritarianism. This show keeps it all so vague, as if it's enough to say, "gee, isn't it absurd how people will follow a charismatic leader into death and destruction even when they're obviously unhinged?" When no, it's not absurd if you understand the psychological need that charismatic leader taps into.
I suppose I don't understand what story we should be following. My sense from the pilot is that the dramatic question is: will Elena's psychoses lead her regime to ruin? But to tell that story, we need to understand the specific dynamic that brought her into power because only then can we judge if her quirks outweigh whatever psychological need she's fulfilling for her people. But then, maybe I'm wrong about the story. Is it the story of two zany people connecting in the unlikeliest of places?
Even if it is a smaller story about Elena and Herbert, without knowing their context it holds little weight. When Herbert says that the US is making Elena a fool, is that true and a genuine concern of the people? A minority opinion? Him cynically playing to her ego? I have no way to know, so I can't judge whether he's some kind of true believer zealot, opportunist, or something else. Which means I can't hook into what he's doing, why he's doing it, and thus why I should care.
Aside from all that, I think this needed to be far funnier than it is. Which again circles back to specificity. If this weren't so carefully generic, maybe they could have given it the bite and wit it needed to really hit. Instead it feels like it landed in some mushy middle - unclear about its point and without the laughs to make it a fun watch. Winslet is amazing, as always, but I'm not sure why they went this route. After all, SUCCESSION went full Murdoch satire, and brilliantly so. If you get the chance to satirize authoritarians on HBO, why play coy? Just go for it.
I found it a frustrating watch.
Great review Myles. It's fair to say I enjoyed it far more than the episode. I don't know if I was in the wrong mood or I had the critical reviews ringing in my brain, but I really really struggled to get through it. I found everything about it irritating. I won't be watching any more because it irritated me too much. I was hoping it would be clever hybrid between Succession and The Great and no show can really live up to that sort of expectation. There's a reason those two shows are so loved because they do everything to such a high level. This just felt lazy and I just didn't care about any of it. It gives me no pleasure I was really looking forward to this one. I don't want to start wondering if the 9pm Sunday night slot is losing its touch but this didn't fill me with confidence.