I was so looking forward to this mini-series but was woefully disappointed. Helen Mirren is a wonderful actress and proves it yet again. Alas, the script was deadly dull, Jason Clark was miscast in the role of her lover Potemkin, having zero chemistry with Mirren, and the beginning, with the murder of Catherine's husband, Peter, which should have been shown as a flashback with a much younger actress, is instead shown with the seventy something Mirren. Historically inaccurate on more than one level, including the reference to Istanbul instead of Constantinople. After two episodes this viewer was reluctant to watch the last two episodes and it was a plodding deadly dull task. The language was vulgar and the sex scenes crude. All in all it needed a much better writer. Dragging yesterday's historical figures down into the gutter to satisfy today's mores is not the way to go. Major disappointment.
Review of Catherine the Great
