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All Hail the Empress of HBO: Wag Suprema Winslet in The Regime (Max).
Dear Wags,
You all need to be better at being normal. When you’re not normal, it makes me feel that you’re telling me that I’m not normal. Which makes me distrust all of you, and want you to be dead. So, just be better at being normal. That’s managerial wisdom from Elena Vernham, chancellor of a mythical country plopped somewhere between Georgia and Belarus. She’s speaking to her toadying ministers, who quiver around a conference table fit for a Bond villain. It’s political satire—a poke at the global authoritarian clique. Whether you find it amusing or not depends on your reading of current events.
Kate Winslet, who plays Vernham, is one of those head girls who ace everything. She’s wickedly funny as a martinet in a land blessed with sugar beets (which we can mostly do without) and cobalt (which we require for our infernal phones). The underlying premise of her latest limited series is that the lurch toward autocracy is driving everybody mad, starting with the autocrats. Which is true and not hilarious.
The Regime is the baby of Will Tracy, an executive producer of Succession and co-writer of the class war horror-comedy The Menu. Directed by Stephen Frears and Jessica Hobbs, it’s far lighter — a dash of Dr. Strangelove plus a dollop of Veep. The underlying message comes from Lord Acton: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Holed up in an expropriated hotel that is her gilded cage, Elena falls for a war criminal (Matthias Schoenaerts) who becomes her Rasputin. Like all despots, she’s obsessed with invisible enemies. In this case, the bugaboo is mold.
Her personal storm trooper vets every ornate chamber for toxic moisture. Ah, the zany mysophobia of despots! Elena slides deeper into paranoia as mobs take to the streets. Meanwhile, an all-star cast of apparatchiks, dissidents, and diplomats plot for the morning after. The dialogue, fast, tart and profane, is in the Armando Iannucci vein. How far we’ve traveled from his Veep. There the target was a government, bumbling and hypocritical, elected by the people.
It’s sometimes said that humor is the best weapon against tyrants. Like Elena, the real world variety are clowns, with spray tans, shoulder pads, and silly hair. (The emperor always has many walk-in closets of godawful clothes.) We ridicule such preposterous figures because it gets under their skin. Still, it’s worth asking whether it actually works. Charlie Chaplin, among others, sent up Hitler. Hitler carried on being Hitler.
Sometimes, wit is all we have. But cleverness can make us forget we have other tools at our disposal. A world teetering on the brink has ginned up a batch of Elenas. Mocking them is a kick, but it has limited utility. Not so long ago, inventing a Lower Slobovia like the one in The Regime would have merely been silly. In a European context, all that crazy was supposedly behind us. Not so anymore.
As Elena puts it, we need to be better at being normal. There are some brilliant lines in The Regime. It’s an attempt by talented people to leaven a dicey moment with jokes. Lampooning our predicament may be clever, even noble. The question is whether we’re still in a laughing mood.
Yours Ever,
The Hunter by Tana French
While BookWag is on a hard-earned holiday, we curled up with latest peaty thriller from French, who quadruples the Irish murder rate. Her latest Cal Hooper mystery puts the former Chicago cop in a pickle. He’s been helping wild teen Trey Reddy find a better future. But Trey’s absent dad has returned to the West of Ireland, bringing along an English real estate hustler. The result is a plot generously sauced with bogs, brogues and bodies. — Patrick Clarke
Not Your China Doll by Katie Gee Salisbury
The world has lately rediscovered Wag Emerita Anna May Wong, who rose to stardom in the Jazz Age. Mostly consigned to stereotypical parts in Hollywood pictures, she was gutted when passed over for the starring role in The Good Earth. Despite such disappointments, Wong became the toast of Europe, brought global attention to Japan’s atrocities in China, and was the first Asian American to land her own TV series. Salisbury renders her epic life with flair. — Hui Fei
Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare
We have many thoughts about Ian Lancaster Fleming. So does Shakespeare, a formidable biographer who was given unprecedented access to the author’s archive. The fellow who invented James Bond was a diabolical mastermind, shaping mid-century conceptions of masculinity and far more. Dissolute, retrograde, connected, charming, and astoundingly prolific, Fleming’s cultural powers are still being felt. Shakespeare grasps the enormity of that influence. — Rosie Carver
Crisis in Ruritania
The Regime (Max). As above. Kate Winslet, Doyenne of HBO, can rivet us with a line-by-line reading of Bond Investing for Dummies. As an Eva Peron-like figure running roughshod over a made-up country, she is in the company of Hugh Grant as a persecuted opposition leader, Andrea Riseborough as her harried palace manager, Martha Plimpton as a U.S. senator, and Matthias Schoenaerts as her twisted confidante. — Helen Koknitz
Bad Vacation
The Tourist (Netflix). When last we left Jamie Dornan, he was wandering around Australia with amnesia, having survived a car wreck. Why was everybody trying to kill him? We still aren’t quite sure. In Season 2 of the BBC thriller, he’s discovered his name (Elliot) and location (Ireland). Too bad he’s being chased by warring crime families. Danielle Macdonald returns as his plucky love interest. —Samuel Gerard
Quirky Mystery Lady
Elsbeth (CBS). There are many reasons to greet Elsbeth with suspicion. She’s an oddball nobody takes seriously —until she outsmarts another killer. In other words, she’s Columbo/Monk/Pokerface, etc. Still, she happens to be the child of Geniuses Michelle and Robert King, possibly the last smarties working in network TV. Carrie Preston, who originated the character of a loopy but brilliant lawyer on The Good Wife and played her in its spinoff, The Good Fight, now gets her Rhoda. But you don’t need to know the backstory. It’s expertly executed comfort food. —Abigail Mitchell
Wag Liza Powel O’Brien knows a bit about letting somebody else shine. Her husband, Conan O’Brien, is well, Conan O’Brien. Smarties know who the real star of the family is. Liza’s new podcast, Significant Others, takes a look at unheralded figures behind well-publicized geniuses, such as Tolstoy’s wife Sophia, Gandhi’s wife Kasturba, and Nabokov’s wife, Véra. There’s even Peggy Shippen, without whom we wouldn’t have Benedict Arnold to kick around. —Ellie Occitan
Jessica Pratt has a way of making us feel like we’re in a movie from 1967, bathed in sun-dappled light as we drive to the beach in an Austin-Healey convertible. Life Is, the lead single off her fourth album, Here is the Pitch, has an echoey Sunshine Pop sound. It might have been written for Nico, or even Petula Clark. She’s executed a paisley caftan of a song. Float along. — Michelle Burroughs
It's a Bank Holiday, so all the hospitals are shut/Guess I'll have to saw off my own foot. Sounds like a bad plan. But since it came from Yard Act—that witty Post-punk outfit from Leeds—we’re going along with it. Their latest release, Where’s My Utopia, is a big swing, filled with trenchant songs from Britain’s hard little heart. The single An Illusion mines dreariness for infectious hooks. — Pukey Nichols
Tasty bites in the Auld Reekie (Photo: The Little Chartroom).
In March, the Edinburgh sun goes to bed by dinner time. Luckily, the Scottish capital blooms with great restaurants. Avoid festival crowds and visit when the town is as gloomy and atmospheric as a Kate Atkinson mystery. We always duck into Wag Roberta Hall-McCarron’s the Little Chartroom, an institution in the revived dockside district of Leith. They specialize in elevated local cuisine, which means they whip up items like haggis dauphine. You won’t go wrong with the Hake and prawns with hispi cabbage and roasted shallots. As Miss Jean Brodie would say, it’s the crème de la crème (14 Bonnington Road, Edinburgh).
CultureWag is the brainchild of JD Heyman, former top editor at People and Editor-in-Chief of Entertainment Weekly (among other things) and staffed by the Avengers of Talent. Our goal is to cover interesting topics with wit and integrity. We serve smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. Questions? Drop us a line at intern@culturewag.com.
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“Wags. It is the good ones who keep the diaries; the bad ones never have the time.” —Tallulah Bankhead
