‘The Great’ Has Huzzahed Its Last Huzzah
The Emmy-award-winning series, The Great, created by acclaimed Australian writer Tony McNamara, has been cancelled. So, let’s pour one out.
Hollywood actors and writers teaming up for the biggest strike against the AMPTP in decades was always going to mean cancelled shows, delayed movies, and a lot of hungry writers and actors who deserve better. From Dune, to A League of Their Own, The Idol, and even The Dry 2: Force of Nature – the major studios are delaying and cancelling beloved content left and right. Because, you know, that’s way more profitable than just respecting your workers’ rights and paying them, apparently.
I’m a staunch labour rights supporter, so don’t worry, this piece will be a far cry from me blaming the strikes for The Great’s cancellation. Instead, consider this a eulogy of sorts for The Great, and a celebration of the unparalleled anachronistic excellence the TV show gave us over three seasons. I’ll also share some thoughts on what us fans were robbed of without a fourth and final season — all thanks (probably) to corporate greed.
The Great Served C*nt, No Other Way To Say It
Created by Oscar winning screen-writer Tony McNamara (The Favourite, Cruella, Puberty Blues), The Great satirically depicted the plotting, politics, and power plays that led to Catherine the Great ruling Russia. An ‘occasionally true’ series, the show follows Catherine (Elle Fanning) and her evolution from progressive German heiress determined to dance along the silver lining of her arranged marriage, to Catherine the Great, responsible for dethroning and imprisoning her betrothed in a violent coup.
I’ll never understand how The Great hasn’t won more awards. I’m forever haunted by the question of how a show about a hick coaching soccer in England has more Emmys than a totally unique satirical epic in which McNamara and his team used a woman’s rise to power hundreds of years ago to hold a mirror to the follies of today’s ruling class.
Blurring the boundaries between comedy and drama, The Great boasts an unparalleled (and a very Australian) MO. Scenes in which Nicholas Hoult’s Peter the Great prances through royal halls stark naked but for a string of pearls and munches cake are often followed by portrayals of the hollow madness of a mother’s grief with discomforting precision. Never truly disparate, though, the show’s chaotically comedic moments and its sincerely dark ones were bound by a staunch dedication to presenting humanity’s absurd capacity for cunning, caring and everything in between.
The Great Gave Us The Most Brutal, Brilliant Marriage Story Of All Time
Marriage is complicated, especially when you’re at ideological loggerheads over the political soul of Russia. As Catherine realises hedonistic cruelty seems to be Peter the Great’s only true calling, overthrowing him seems like a no brainer… until she remembers their marriage is her only legitimate claim to the Russian throne.
Forget Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, Peter and Catherine’s journey as a married couple is about the only TV marriage that could rival Succession’s Shiv and Tom for duplicity, chemistry, and general what-the-fuckness. Over three seasons, Elle Fanning and Nicolas Hoult performed their absolute guts out, doing everything from Olympic-level verbal jousting, to ruthless attempts of murdering one another in the dead of night, bafflingly bold sex scenes in throne rooms, and scenes so strangely tender they make your heart ache.
It’s a great shame that, despite being nominated almost every year since its premiere, neither Hoult or Fanning were awarded major industry awards for their hypnotic performances in The Great. You might think I’m being dramatic, but I genuinely believe they should be remembered as one of the most iconic pairs in television.
The Final Season of The Great We’ll Never See (Major Spoilers)
For all I know, three seasons of The Great might have been the plan all along. But considering the tone of the announcement and the implications of the ending of Season 3, I doubt it.
See, the series is called The Great, not Catherine the Great, as Catherine and Peter share the title in both history and the show. But ultimately history remembers Catherine under that particular moniker more than her husband. And, for three seasons, we had watched Catherine fight her husband for that place in history.
So, when Peter died halfway through the most recent season, the latter half of Season 3 is spent setting up Catherine as the sole ruler she’s notorious for. The final scene sees Catherine, grief-stricken but proud, dancing to ACDC’s ‘All Night Long’ and embracing her destiny despite its heartbreaking cost.
A fourth and final season would have portrayed Catherine finally getting to be what she set out to be from the outset; a revolutionary ruler of Russia. But with Russia’s people in uproar over her ascent and a very killable infant son her only tie to the throne in their eyes, the final season would have, undoubtedly, seen Catherine’s ruthlessness in full bloom.
I Blame The Studios
How embarrassing and ironic to lose such a quality story about the forbidden fruits and follies of ambition to (again, probably) corporate greed. Perhaps in another lifetime, one where the major studios pay the people who write their films and series a living wage, I’d be getting excited to see what happens next. But alas, here I am, pouring one out for The Great, a series that more than earned its title. Huzzah.
Junkee acknowledges that actors, writers, and other creatives who worked on The Great may be on strike due to the industrial action currently being taken by SAG-AFTRA and WGA. Read more about the strikes here.
Image credit: The Great, Stan