Overview
How do you make a great show even better? A show that's announces its greatness in its title, for that matter? For its second season, you ramp up everything that worked so well in its initial batch of episodes — and you also add Gillian Anderson.
That's what's on the cards when The Great returns in November for another satirical dalliance with Russian history. One of the gems of 2020 — a year that wasn't great in general, but delivered plenty of top-notch new TV shows that we all streamed all year — the series takes a savage yet delightful jump back to the 18th century, to the time of its namesake Catherine the Great.
As its first season showed, The Great is filled with the expected lavish costumes, wigs, sets and decor as it explores an immensely famous time that had a significant impact upon the world. Normally, that'd all smack of a certain kind of drama — you know the type — however this is firmly a comedy as well.
Starring Elle Fanning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) as the eponymous ruler and Nicholas Hoult (Those Who Wish Me Dead) as her husband Peter III, The Great is full of witty, laugh-out-loud lines, sports an irreverent and often cheeky mood, and has ample fun with real-life details — much in the way that Oscar-winner The Favourite did with British royalty on the big screen. That comparison couldn't actually be more fitting, with that film's BAFTA-winning screenwriter, Australian Tony McNamara, using his skills to pen The Great as well.
Across its ten-episode, very easy-to-binge, immensely hilarious first season, the series immersed viewers in Catherine and Peter's hardly happy marriage, all the day-to-day dramas in the Russian court, and her plans to push him aside and become the country's ruler in her own right. In its second season — which'll start streaming via Stan in Australia on Saturday, November 20, and just dropped its latest trailer after a teaser a few months back — it'll now chart the aftermath, as well as Catherine's pregnancy.
Here are five things that should take your fancy: Catherine and Peter slinging sharp banter back and forth, her preference for eating chicken over sex, the word "huzzah", more chaotic antics and Gillian Anderson joining the cast. Because starring in everything from The X-Files and Hannibal to The Crown and Sex Education isn't enough for latter, she pops up here as Catherine's mother. If you weren't already hooked on all things The Great, that's obviously an excellent — and great, naturally — reason to start watching.
Check out the first trailer for The Great's second season below:
The Great's second season will be available to stream in Australia via Stan on November 20.