“I think the title card reads ‘an occasionally true story,’” McNamara tells the Sydney Morning Herald’s Michael Idato. Much like how his previous film, The Favourite, reimagined the life of Britain’s Queen Anne as a bawdy “period comedy,” “The Great” revels in the absurd, veering from the historical record to gleefully present a royal drama tailor-made for modern audiences. Adapted from his 2008 play of the same name, the ten-part miniseries is the brainchild of screenwriter Tony McNamara. Perhaps most impressively, the empress-born a virtually penniless Prussian princess-wielded power for three decades despite the fact that she had no claim to the crown whatsoever.Ī new Hulu series titled “ The Great” takes its cue from the little-known beginnings of Catherine’s reign. Ruler of Russia from 1762 to 1796, Catherine championed Enlightenment ideals, expanded her empire’s borders, spearheaded judicial and administrative reforms, dabbled in vaccination, curated a vast art collection that formed the foundation of one of the world’s greatest museums, exchanged correspondence with such philosophers as Voltaire and Dennis Diderot, penned operas and children’s fairy tales, founded the country’s first state-funded school for women, drafted her own legal code, and promoted a national system of education. Catherine the Great is a monarch mired in misconception.ĭerided both in her day and in modern times as a hypocritical warmonger with an unnatural sexual appetite, Catherine was a woman of contradictions whose brazen exploits have long overshadowed the accomplishments that won her “the Great” moniker in the first place.

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