The Great: Season One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

The Great: Season One Blu-ray Movie Review

Huzzah, indeed!

'The Great: Season One' arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Paramount. The ten episodes are spread over three discs, and several "behind-the-scenes" features are included, all found on the third disc. The 1080p transfer is quite good, as is the English 5.1 DTS HD-Master Audio track. Neither a slipcover nor a Digital Copy are included.

Huzzah! I'm just preparing you for watching the first season of The Great, the show based on writer and creator Tony McNamara's 2008 play. They use that word quite frequently to show support for an idea, an action, a delicious bite of food, a great glass of wine, a great shot of vodka, any number of things, really. Huzzah! And unless you're a person who attends Renaissance fairs with some regularity, it's likely not a word that's in your vocabulary. Never fear. It will be now. Huzzah!

If you're a viewer like me, historical dramas can be a daunting affair. I often feel that I ought to know something about the events taking place in the series, some sort of biographical data of the players involved, and enough other events happening at the same time so that I've got some sort of historical context for the programming. In other words, homework. Lots of pre-watch homework. However, when I saw the tagline on the cover, "An Occasionally True Story", I thought perhaps knowing that Catherine ruled Russia, was involved in more wars than she perhaps would have liked, was a proponent of education and enlightenment, and that unfortunate myth about the horse, well, I thought maybe that was enough. As it turns out, it is. McNamara's approach to Catherine the Great's reign, as depicted here is exactly that, more concerned with telling a riotous, bawdy, dramatic, and moving story than it is with getting all of the facts right. He adds just enough historical and biographical data for it to be fair to call it a story about Catherine the Great, but takes enough artistic liberty to fill in the blanks, embellish, and fabricate what he needs to entertain the audience relentlessly. And is it entertaining? Indeed. Huzzah!

Season one begins with Catherine (Elle Fanning) at home in Germany. She's just discovered that a marriage has been arranged between her and Peter, the current emperor of Russia, and Peter the Great's son. She is ecstatic, and simply buzzing with ideas about how she and her husband- to-be will change Russia, turning it into a beacon of light for all of Europe. Upon arriving in Russia, she is clearly moved, and upon meeting Peter (Nicholas Hoult), she is clearly dismayed. He's not at all the man she hoped he'd be. At court, she meets Peter's top advisors: the slithering Archbishop ("Archie") (Adam Godley), the wise but nervous Orlo (Sacha Dhawan), and the vodka-soaked military leader General Velementov (Douglas Hodge). None are initially very excited about her desire to shape a new Russia. Nor is Peter, for that matter. Her main ally and advisor in the early goings is her maid, Marial (Phoebe Fox), a former noble whose rank was ripped away due to some unknown action of her father. It's not long before Catherine understands that if she wants to change Russia in accordance with what she feels is her destiny, she is first going to have to remove Peter from the equation. The balance of the season finds Catherine and Marial crafting plans and recruiting allies to put Catherine on the throne as the unquestioned empress and sole leader of Russia.

At it's heart, The Great is about female empowerment. Afterall, it's Catherine who has a grand vision for Russia's future and is impatient to bring it about. Catherine's best advisors and confidants are both women - Marial and Elizabeth (Belinda Bromilow) - and they serve to help her course correct, navigate Russia and the politics within the court, and take decisive action when need be even if it's unpleasant. Further, Elizabeth holds some level of influence over her nephew, Peter, while Marial has Archie's ear. Together, the trio accomplishes much while not actually being in positions of power. The men in power do very little. Peter would much rather be hunting or carousing than ruling, and when he is forced to lead, he does very poorly, proving to be an impulsive and capricious emperor, lacking any real skill or knowledge. He doesn't have a vision for himself let alone the country, believing merely that being emperor is his God-given right, while the nobles around him curry favor with limitless raised glasses and shouts of "Huzzah!". Orlo, while well-read and politically savvy, may have ideas about the betterment of Russia, but lacks the courage of his convictions to ever try to translate them into reality. Velementov may well have seen too much horror to ever look at the world save through the bottom of a vodka bottle and his current military campaigns meet with nothing but death and disappointment. Archie, meanwhile, is so intent on retaining his own personal power and position, and the church's influence over the general population, that he views any new idea or technology as something that must immediately be squashed. That fact that these three women - an aristocrat, a German interloper, and a maid - can influence them, inspire them to reach for something better, and work with them, around them, and through them to bring about regime change is truly astonishing.

As uproariously funny as the show may be, The Great is not for the faint of heart, as sex and violence are two elements that pervade every episode. The sex scenes, while not as graphically depicted as in some other shows, are numerous, though most are usually framed to come off as preposterous or absurd. Humor, not titillation, is the goal in most instances. The sex-related dialogue is much more graphic, though again, often very funny. Considering the empire is led by Peter, a man known for his impulsive and unrestrained use of violence, death and mayhem abound. Virtually every episode contains some amount of bloodshed and conveys an often callous disregard for human life, especially when it comes to those of the lower classes. Scenes pertaining directly to the conflict with Sweden are limited in number but do convincingly depict the horror of war. Even so, many of these are also positioned to illicit a chuckle rather than a wince.

The following episodes comprise The Great: Season One. The very abbreviated summaries are intended to provide a general summary of each episode without spoiling anything that cannot be discerned or deduced from the cover art or the official synopsis:

Disc One:

The Great: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Great: Season One arrives on Blu-ray with a very strong transfer that's worth celebrating. Huzzah! Bright colors of period costumes, most notably Catherine's stunning pink dress leap off the screen, as do golds, blues, and reds. Fabric textures are clearly evident in the women's dresses, Velementov's uniform, and the more rough attire of the serfs. The innumerable wigs, jewelry, and medals also yield great amounts of detail. Environmental detail is also significant, as we inspect the appointments and ornamentation of Catherine's and Peter's apartments, the breakfast room, and Archie's very busy dwelling. Black levels are most satisfactory with environmental particulars still observable. Skin tones are universally and consistently excellent and only look unnatural when that is clearly the intent of the makeup applied to certain women and some men. I did not detect any banding or other defects.

The Great: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

An English 5.1 DTS HD-Master Audio track impeccably adorns The Great: Season One. Dialogue is crisply and cleanly rendered, and while there may be the occasional language barrier, nothing is ever unintelligible. Sound effects are realistic and carry sufficient heft, especially gunshots, horse hooves, and carriage wheels. Music, which is prominent in so many episodes, is never allowed to dominate, sitting typically very comfortably under the level of the dialogue. Directionality is good and the surrounds provide subtle immersion when called upon to do so during busy banquet/celebration scenes and battle sequences. The songs featured during the end credits are also worth sticking around for and give the audio track a better chance to stretch its legs. Both English and English SDH subtitles are available.

The Great: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The special features are all located on the Disc Three and are as follows:

The Great: Season One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult have an undeniable chemistry that keeps a high level of "will they, won't they" tension in their relationship, such that even though we know Catherine's coup is historically unavoidable, it has us consistently wondering if they couldn't really make a go of it as a couple after all. The fact that this tension fuels our willingness to have the story depart that radically from the text and rewrite history, is, in my mind, the single most significant indicator of the strength of the performances of the two leads. The at-times caustic but never less-than-hilarious script and the phenomenal supporting cast conspire to make the show consistently entertaining and absolutely binge-worthy. Production values are incredibly high and the technical merits of the disc are strong, even if the extras are a bit on the skimpy side. The Great: Season One, is, in a word, great. Huzzah. Highly Recommended.