Review: The Great

The subtitle tipped me off. Preceded by an asterisk, it told me most of what I needed to know about a riveting comedy series.

I say most — and not all — because The Great: An Occasionally True Story, a genre-bending offering on Hulu, surprised me. It surprised me in ways I found disturbing, annoying, and ultimately fulfilling.

Based loosely — and I do mean loosely — on historical events, the series covers the early reign of Catherine the Great, the bold, enigmatic Prussian princess who ruled Russia from 1762 to 1796.

Elle Fanning stars as Catherine, while Nicholas Hoult (Peter III), Belinda Bromilow (Aunt Elizabeth), Phoebe Fox (Marial), Adam Godley (Archbishop), Sacha Dhawan (Orlo), Gwilym Lee (Grigor Dymov), and Douglas Hodge (Velementov) highlight a strong supporting cast. Each brings something to a series that breaks every rule in the book.

A warning: The Great is vulgar, incredibly vulgar. If foul language and gratuitous sex are dealbreakers, run from this production with your arms raised high. This series is Animal House, Russian royal court edition. It is also violent — not Game of Thrones violent, but still violent.

I didn't care for that. I would have preferred less shagging and killing and more history. I grew weary of most of it after a few episodes.

What saved the series, for me, anyway, was the writing. The Great's writers did something that Hollywood rarely does anymore. They produced something that is genuinely funny. Crude? Yes. Over-the-top? Definitely. But still funny. The series serves wit on a plate. For that reason alone, I was able to set aside the vulgarity, historical flaws, and anachronisms and enjoy a show that evolved in positive ways.

In The Great, Catherine battles everyone from Peter, the emperor husband she deposes, to the royal court to the Russian Orthodox Church. She does so in a usually vain attempt to bring Russia into the modern age. The empress' volatile relationship with her husband is particularly well done. She goes from loving him to loathing him to loving him again in a way that is not only believable but also poignant.

Though Fanning is only one of a dozen actors playing primary roles, she is the only one who really counts. Nominated for several awards last year, including two Golden Globes, she carries the series from its rocky start to its satisfying end. She is on the small screen what Catherine the Great was on the world stage. She is her own woman. Rating: 4/5.

Giving a French region its due

For some, Alsace is a backwater. Tucked in a remote corner of France, next to Germany and Switzerland, it is a region often overlooked by travelers and guides. It is a land that time forgot.

Strasbourg, its largest city, pales next to Paris. The Vosges, its mountain range, pales next to the Alps. Even its vineyards do not compare to those in Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Champagne. Alsace is, in many ways, the Rodney Dangerfield of France. Yet, for me right now, this crossroads of Europe is the most important place on earth. It is the primary setting of my latest work in progress.

I picked Alsace, the Vosges, and the nearby city of Saint-Dié as settings several months ago. I did so mostly for practical reasons. All three venues played vital roles in both world wars. All supported the narrative in Duties and Dreams, the third and last novel in the Second Chance series. Each place seemed appealing and interesting.

But it wasn't until I started writing the book that I realized how interesting they were. I soon became immersed in learning about places I have never seen and had not studied until recently.

Among other things, I learned that Alsace is almost as German as it is French. Germany conquered and annexed the region in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. It gave it up after World War I, grabbed it again in World War II, and surrendered it in 1945.

That created both possibilities and problems for me. On the plus side, I was able to set compelling stories in two distinct eras. On the down side, I had to deal with different spellings of placenames. For much of the time period between 1871 and 1945, Strasbourg was Straßburg, Villé was Weiler, Lièpvre was Leberau, Sélestat was Schlettstadt, and Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines was Markirch.

Some of these places, all featured in the novel, also have Alsatian names – names that might have appeared on maps and road signs of the times – but I did not bother with them. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible for both readers and myself.

Of course, in D and D, I will do more than explain the names of places. I will describe their features. I will take readers to an abbey in Mont Sainte-Odile, a railroad crossing in Leberau, an isolated cottage in Weiler, and the conical sandstone peak of Climont, home of the "Fountain of Youth." I'll give them a taste of Alsace.

I hope to complete the first draft of Duties and Dreams in the next six weeks. I plan to publish the novel itself in December.

Photograph Note: Climont mountain (top image), Strasbourg in three languages (bottom). Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.