--- title: "The Regime" year: 2024 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-regime" fi1m_score: 48 critics_score: 49 critics_reviews: 12 published: "2026-09-17T13:39:44.252686+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T13:39:44.831431+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Regime (2024) Created by Will Tracy · 50m · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Comedy **Fi1m score: 48** · Critics 49 from 12 reviews *In a sentence:* A dictator terrified of mould in a palace nobody thought to name > Kate Winslet plays a woman who has decided the country is her bedroom, and the performance is worth seeing. The series around her cannot decide whom it is mocking, and five hours is a long time to wait for it to choose. ## Synopsis Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) rules a small, unnamed Central European country from a palace she is convinced is rotting with mould. Her husband Nicholas (Guillaume Gallienne) has learnt to say nothing. Into this she brings Corporal Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a soldier in disgrace after his unit fired on protesting miners, and gives him a hygrometer and a job walking a pace behind her, reading the damp out loud. Agnes (Andrea Riseborough) runs the household and keeps the staff quiet. Emil Bartos (Stanley Townsend), a businessman, wants a deal with the Americans for the country’s cobalt. Elena wants to stay well, stay loved and stay in power, and cannot tell the three apart. ## Review Will Tracy, who created *The Regime* and wrote it with the novelist Gary Shteyngart, has built a six-part comedy about a dictator and left the dictatorship out. Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) runs a small, unnamed Central European country from a palace she believes is rotting with mould, and the state is whatever her fears happen to be that week. It is a sketch idea stretched over six episodes of 50 minutes, and it keeps raising a target and lowering the rifle. We may as well say that Winslet is the reason to watch and the only one. She is remarkable. Winslet plays Elena with a slack half-smile and a voice that keeps sliding up into a coo, a woman who addresses her nation as if soothing a child in the night. She wants to be well and adored, and has arranged the country so that nobody will tell her she is neither. The best scenes are the televised addresses, which Peter Lambert cuts between Elena at her desk and the faces of the people made to watch her, and Winslet plays them dead straight and kind. We found ourselves liking her for whole seconds, then remembering the previous scene, and that small shame is the sharpest thing the series has to offer. Matthias Schoenaerts is Corporal Herbert Zubak, a disgraced soldier brought in to walk a step behind her and read out the humidity. He plays him as a large, damaged animal that has found a hand to feed it, and his early scenes with Elena are the series at its most alive. Guillaume Gallienne is Nicholas, the husband, who has been in the building so long he has become furniture, and is drily funny about it. Andrea Riseborough’s Agnes runs the household with a face that has stopped registering anything. Around them stand the men of the court, Danny Webb, Henry Goodman, David Bamber and Rory Keenan among them, each given perhaps one scene of real fear before the script moves on. Kave Quinn has designed the palace as a ballroom turning into a hospital: gilt and chandeliers above, plastic sheeting and dehumidifiers below, mould creeping up the plaster. Alwin H. Küchler shoots the corridors dead centre and lets people walk towards the camera for a long time, in a state where everyone is always on their way to be told off. Consolata Boyle puts Elena in pastel suits and sashes, more of them the grander the occasion. Alexandre Desplat writes an operetta score, all skipping woodwind and waltz time, that treats every crisis as a farce, and before long we wished it would stop telling us so. The trouble is what it is all for. The series borrows a bit of every strongman, a dead father she still consults, a foreign power after the minerals, a brute at the elbow, and refuses to decide which of them it means. The country has no name, no history and no people we meet outside the palace, so nothing Elena does costs anything we can see. Tracy and Shteyngart know tyrants are ridiculous, say so in nearly every scene, and get no further. By the fourth episode we were bored, and cross about it, because everything a proper satire needs is in the building and the writers have not worked out what to do with it. Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs share the direction, which is brisk and never the problem. Frears made [*The Queen*](https://film.one/film/the-queen), which was funny about power because it knew exactly who paid for the palace and who cleaned it. Beside [*The Death of Stalin*](https://film.one/film/the-death-of-stalin), whose comedy came from men who knew what happened to anyone who laughed at the wrong moment, *The Regime* looks like a series that would like to be dangerous but has not decided to whom. Watch the first two episodes, for Winslet, Schoenaerts and the plastic sheeting. If by the end of the second you can say what the series is about, you are ahead of the people who made it. The final episode takes a turn we will not describe, except that it is loud and does not change our mind. *Fi1m score 48, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics agree on one thing: Kate Winslet is the reason to watch. Nearly every review singles out her chancellor as commanding, committed and willingly ugly, and several call the performance the series’ only real achievement. The production is generally found handsome, with strong dialogue and a good eye for the trappings of power. Beyond that, the reviews lean mixed to negative. The reservations cluster on the satire itself. Most say the series does not know what it is satirising, that it notices things about power and fascism without saying anything about them, and that the comedy and drama pull against each other. The spread is wide, from Variety and Consequence, which find enough to recommend it with caveats, down to The Guardian, which calls the show confused and a wasted opportunity, and IndieWire, which says Winslet cannot salvage it. The British press, reviewing in April, is cooler than the American reviews of February and March. ### Reviews we read (12) - **Variety**, Alison Herman (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Winslet’s commanding and charismatic performance as the central strength of this surreal political satire, noting its eye for the aesthetics of power and psychological dynamics even as it favors abstraction over sharp real-world insight. [Read](https://variety.com/2024/tv/tv-reviews/the-regime-review-kate-winslet-hbo-1235924653/) - **The Times**, Ben Dowell (60/100, inferred): Kate Winslet is unhinged in this dark, daft satire as a glamorous chancellor ruling like a cross between Stalin, Putin and Eva Perón. The dark and daft registers jostle though not always convincingly, with the early episodes not always clear on what is being satirised. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/first-look-review-kate-winslet-the-regime-fxglppf0h) - **Evening Standard**, Vicky Jessop (55/100, inferred): Kate Winslet is excellent as the autocratic ruler but the tinpot satire has little to say beyond the well-worn line that power corrupts. The premise is good and the cast excellent, but the tone is wildly uneven and the plot fuzzy. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/the-regime-review-sky-atlantic-kate-winslet-matthias-schoenaerts-b1143707.html) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Daniel Fienberg (50/100, inferred): The critic calls Winslet’s complex performance the main reason to watch, but finds the political satire shallow and toothless, with little to say beyond obvious points about power despite strong dialogue and production values. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-regime-review-kate-winslet-1235834300/) - **Empire**, John Nugent (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the series watchable and handsomely made with strong performances, but a dysfunctional satire lacking wit, insight, or jokes that fails to meet the moment of current politics. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/the-regime/) - **The Telegraph** (2/5): Despite talent involved, the series has cardboard-cutout characters and a dizzying script with no focus. Winslet throws herself into the role but fights an uphill battle against muddled thinking and ham-fisted satire. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2024/04/08/the-regime-sky-atlantic-review-kate-winslet-hbo-politics/) - **Vulture** (40/100, inferred): The series is desperate to say things about fascism but can only get as far as noticing them. Winslet's strong central performance is singled out for praise amid the failures of the satire. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-regime-tv-review-hbo.html) - **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the series a crushing political farce that Kate Winslet cannot salvage. Winslet's committed performance is noted but the satire lacks bite or clear purpose. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/the-regime-review-kate-winslet-hbo-series-1234958729/) - **The Guardian**, Lucy Mangan (25/100, inferred): The critic finds Kate Winslet's performance superb but the show deeply confused, failing to cohere despite strong pedigree and cast. It knows it is a satire but does not know what it is satirising, resulting in flat comedy and drama that wastes a great opportunity. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/08/the-regime-review-kate-winslet-is-wasted-in-this-mess-of-a-satire) - **Consequence** (B-): The critic views the series as an uneven political satire that struggles to fully coalesce its targets and maintain tonal consistency despite strong direction. Winslet’s committed, ugly performance as the paranoid chancellor stands out as the main reason to watch. [Read](https://consequence.net/2024/02/the-regime-review-kate-winslet/) - **Collider**, Carly Lane (65/100, inferred): The critic praises Winslet’s compelling performance as the standout element but notes the series struggles to balance comedic and dramatic beats or fully skewer its despicable characters. The limited episodes prevent deeper investment in the story and themes. [Read](https://collider.com/the-regime-review/) - **Digital Spy**, Rebecca Cook (50/100, inferred): Winslet delivers another strong performance as the unhinged chancellor, but the series is unclear about what it is trying to satirize and lacks enough humor or insight to sustain interest. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a60407976/regime-review/) ## Details - **Created by:** Will Tracy - **Creator:** Will Tracy - **Director:** Stephen Frears, Jessica Hobbs - **Writer:** Will Tracy, Gary Shteyngart - **Cinematography:** Alwin H. Küchler - **Editor:** Peter Lambert - **Music:** Alexandre Desplat - **Production design:** Kave Quinn - **Costume design:** Consolata Boyle - **Cast:** Kate Winslet as Chancellor Elena Vernham; Matthias Schoenaerts as Corporal Herbert Zubak; Guillaume Gallienne as Nicholas; Andrea Riseborough as Agnes; Danny Webb as Laskin; Henry Goodman as Singer; David Bamber as Schiff; Rory Keenan as Peter - **Runtime:** 50m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 3 March 2024 - **Genres:** Drama, Comedy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MilyCJRKX80 ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming, uhd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *The Death of Stalin* (2017), Fi1m 83: The same joke about frightened men around a corpse, told with a target in view. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-death-of-stalin.md) - *The Great Dictator* (1940), Fi1m 80: Chaplin found the strongman ridiculous eighty years earlier and still knew whom he was hitting. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-great-dictator.md) - *The Favourite* (2018), Fi1m 87: Another court run on one woman’s ailments, filmed with far more appetite for cruelty. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-favourite.md) - *Downfall* (2004), Fi1m 81: The sealed bunker without the jokes; a reminder of what a palace like this costs. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/downfall.md) - *Veep* (2012), Fi1m 82: Political vanity skewered weekly by writers who never lost sight of who deserved it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/veep.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-regime