After three seasons, spanning 14 years of tumultuous Russian (sort of) history, The Great has been cancelled by Hulu. The show, in which Elle Fanning played Catherine, Empress of All Russia, with Nicholas Hoult as her feckless husband Peter, garnered consistently positive reviews and a bevy of Emmy nominations. And yet Hulu – the US broadcaster that sells the UK rights to Lionsgate+ – has decided to call it a day.
Created by Tony McNamara, the Australian screenwriter who had already lent his irreverent, anachronistic tone to Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar-winning The Favourite, The Great could easily have been just another stuffy period drama. Arriving on the scene in the spring of 2020, its debut season was overshadowed by the appearance, later that year, of Bridgerton. Both shows subverted the traditions of the period drama – the bonnets and bodices, the stammering and swooning, the wigs and waistcoats – by employing a distinctively modern sensibility. Unlike every Jane Austen adaptation there’s ever been, these shows were riddled with curse words, violent deaths and the occasional boob.
