IR TV Review: THE REGIME - EPISODE 1 [HBO]
The aspect of a socio-satire is knowing how far to push it. With the first episode of "The Regime", it tries to establish a person in power who has found a way to control a nation. The concept is called Middle Europe with a perspective of Great Britain (obviously with Kate Winslet as a figurehead). Matthias Schoenaerts, so good in many independent films but has never quite made it to an international lead, plays The Butcher who is in a way subjugated by his ruler but you begin to see the cracks. The show is a little bit out there but there are certain precepts it is working for. Specifically it shows a lady out of control and paranoid and yet supremely intelligent and protective as a dictator parading as a democracy. Winslet enables her ruler with a facial tick and steel that is a choice but it depends what will become of it. There are many different people in the household trying to figure out either how to control her or working it for herself. It is not clear which was this balances yet.
This project is spearheaded by Stephen Frears and works in the context of satire but it truly needs to get a lot darker to be effect. "The Death Of Stalin" as a comparative understood this. However as the first episode unfurls, especially with a meeting with United States diplomats and the underlying disdain back and forth, balanced with a spoken inference of domestic atrocity where protestors were massacred, one gets a sense of what could happen but the dread is not defined or magnified enough. Both Winslet and Schoenaerts are capable of pushing this thing into mythic territory if it pushes that way but the script has to reflect in its build. Many of the scenes here push towards this but in so many ways it is uneven and not unified. You see glimpses in both of them and Riseborough offers a subtle reflection (it is interesting that both Riseborough and Schoenaerts were in the failed film "Amsterdam".) However, as the episode ends, there is an essence of where the puppet and the puppeteer interchange. "The Regime" speaks to potential if it can streamline and focus. Mystery is alright as long as there is an essence and a delivery of endgame. B
By Tim Wassberg
