‘The Regime’ Wants You to Buy What It’s Selling

This should be a slam dunk. Between Kate Winslet, HBO, and unapologetic political satire, this show had all the makings of grade A, Sunday night prestige tv. But throughout the hour-long premiere, I found myself repeatedly checking the run time as I waited for a joke to land, a shocking moment, or to feel anything at all. Once it was over, all I could do was wonder what exactly the hell happened to make something that looked so appealing land with such an unimpressive thud.

Answer: The Regime wants you to buy what it’s selling. The problem is that the show doesn’t believe in its own product. The political satirization isn’t specific enough to draw blood in a satisfactory way—the decision to have set it in an imaginary “Middle Europe” in a non-specific time period only adds to the effect, much like watching a combatant resort to slap fighting rather than wield a nearby knife—rendering most of the humor thin. Meanwhile, the drama lacks any sort of intrigue simply because there’s too little to care about for it to register. It wants to be Veep by way of Yorgos Lanthimos, but became so involved with the superficial elements that it forgot to actually be interesting.

Even the usually impeccable Kate Winslet succumbs to the show’s edgy blandness. Her acting is above form (this is Kate Winslet, after all), but her Chancellor Elena Vernham is overloaded with quirks, like a beautiful ship plagued with barnacles. Where Winslet succeeds, along with the script, are the moments where any sort of emotions are allowed to breathe. Ironically, this typically occurs when Vernham is at her most manipulative, specifically when she’s drawing in Corporal Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), the newest member of her staff. Dubbed “The Butcher” by everyone else thanks to his part in the massacre of protesters, the emotionally haunted Zubak is all too grateful to be Vernhams’ “personal water diviner”—the main purpose of his new assignment being to hold a moisture reader in the air to assure the hypochondriac ruler that her imaginary mold problem is being held at bay—once he meets her in person. “There’s a good man in there who deserves love,” is a hell of a hook for the average man, never mind one who’s as mentally unwell as Zubak.

It’s this dynamic that will almost certainly be the most compelling reason to continue watching this show week after week. Because as much as Vernham uses her cult leader-like appeal to captivate Zubak (going so far as to insist they meet in their dreams), his rough edges and willingness to speak his mind ends up weaving its own spell on her, resulting in Zubak’s rise in the ranks, much to the dismay of Vernham’s aides. It’s mildly amusing to watch the panic set in among them, especially her husband, Nicholas (Guillaume Gallienne), but it never holds the same fascination as the unlikely pair’s growing obsession with one another.

Unfortunately, there’s too little of this yummy toxicity to go around, as The Regime is, first and foremost, a show about the political reverberations of a despotic ruler; there are too many other avenues to pursue beyond one single relationship. For all the cues that the series could have taken from the endlessly messy real-world politics throughout the world, especially the U.S. and the U.K., it doesn’t pick a single one up in a manner that is of any substance or consequence. The Regime is trying to shout at the top of its lungs, but it has absolutely nothing to say.

The Regime streams on Max Sunday nights.

Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba. She can be found on Bluesky here or Twitter.