The period drama is a beautiful thing. Quite literally: beautiful houses, beautiful costumes, beautiful people. It is a stately, sedate staple of British television, from Brideshead Revisited to Pride and Prejudice. On the surface, The Great on Lionsgate+ has all these things. Vast Russian estates, dresses that could be hung in the Hermitage, and a cast who could all model in perfume adverts. In short, the perfect period drama. But The Great isn’t interested in perfection; it’s interested in iconoclasm. Returning now for its third season, this is period drama with an injection of rock’n’roll.
Russia’s most dysfunctional couple are back, and they both have fairly legitimate grievances against the other. Catherine (Elle Fanning) is still reeling from the discovery that Peter (Nicholas Hoult) shagged her mother (and killed her in the process). Peter, meanwhile, has his guard up after Catherine inadvertently butchers his double, Pugachev (also Hoult), in revenge. “We’ve had some difficulties,” Catherine tells her couples’ confessor. “Apparently marriage has challenges,” Peter adds in understatement.
