It seems that not even an A-list cast, multiple Emmy nominations and rave reviews are enough to save a television series in this era of cancellations and culls. After the unsurprising news that The Idol has been axed, the mildly surprising news that Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea prequel Nautilus will not be released at all, and the disheartening news that A League Of Their Own will not get its promised ending, comes the genuinely eyebrow-raising announcement that The Great has been cancelled by Hulu after three magnificently extroverted, “huzzah!”-soaked seasons.
The Great is one of the most enjoyable shows on television. Created by Tony McNamara, who co-wrote The Favourite, it follows Elle Fanning’s Catherine from the naive beginnings of her marriage to Peter III (grandson of Peter the Great), to her emergence as a key figure in the Enlightenment and rise to Empress of All Russia in her own right. This doesn’t necessarily sound like the stuff of comedy greatness, but war-addled Russia in the 18th century proved to be surprisingly fertile ground for rambunctious dark humour. Nicholas Hoult co-stars as the simple, violent, idiotic yet striving Peter, who underestimates his young wife before falling for her completely, all the while locked in a hostile battle of the wills with her. They love each other, they hate each other, they try to kill each other, they have a baby, to a loud backdrop of smashed plates and blasting cannons. It makes that Christmas episode of The Bear look like Couples Therapy.
There are plenty of historical series that aim to grab the attention of a modern audiences with an anachronistic approach, playing loose with the facts, throwing in nods to the future and using contemporary language and music. But even when setting a crucial moment to, say, AC/DC, The Great stood out amongst its peers. It pushed further, with a more voracious appetite. It was one of those rare shows in which it proved largely impossible to guess what might happen next. Most screenwriting, for television and film, is formulaic, and if you watch enough of it, you anticipate the rise and fall of the story, the part where one character is about to face their biggest fear, the part where everything falls away, only to be returned with great fanfare and triumph. The Great was never predictable, as it proved, again and again, by killing off central characters with barely a moment’s notice.
Absolutely nobody was safe, from a bullet, a bear, or an icy lake. Characters would be pivotal one minute, gone the next. Even the status of the actor was no guarantee that they’d stick around for more than a brief guest arc. Its audaciousness was all-encompassing. There was sex, and plenty of it; murder, and plenty of it; betrayals galore, all over the place, as loyalties waxed and waned. It was gory and greedy, and all the while, it snuck in big ideas about class, education, politics, nationalism and faith. It felt ambitious and daring and brash, in a way that television is rarely allowed to be.
When much-loved series are cancelled, and there is a chorus of online outrage, the cold truth is that there is usually a reason for it, even if fans are loth to see the deadwood for the trees. Trying to work out the popularity of a show on a streaming service is an uphill battle and viewing figures are often obscure, but I would hazard a guess that for the most part, shows get cancelled because there simply aren’t enough people watching them. Usually that’s because, as much as the ardent fans may love them, they’re too cult, or too niche, or just not very good.
But this is not true of The Great, which is what makes its cancellation a shock. It had great writing, great acting and was extremely good-looking. Perhaps it was too expensive to make; its costumes and sets certainly appeared to be appropriately lavish. Perhaps not enough people could be won over by the promise that the court of the Empress of All Russia in the 1760s could be a hotbed of sex, murder and fabulous silliness. Perhaps the extravagance of its tonal shifts, from sincerity to satire and back, in a single scene, made it a hard sell. But I am not convinced that these are good reasons.
At least the end of season three felt like a proper, conclusive ending, and it did not have to fully address a world in which Catherine’s principal sparring partner was no longer part of the show. Fans of McNamara’s work will get to see more of what he can do, soon, in Yorgos Lanthimos’s delayed Poor Things. But for all of the recent TV cancellations, I think television will seem less creative and inventive now that The Great has gone.
• This article was amended on 31 August 2023. Catherine the Great was married to Peter III, and not his grandfather Peter the Great as an earlier version said.
