Catherine the Great

She arrives in Russia a starry-eyed teenager, thrilled at the prospect of marrying the Emperor Peter and full of Enlightenment ideals about love and progress. Within days the marriage curdles into farce and cruelty, and Catherine, still smiling, still curtsying, starts quietly wondering whether she might rule the country better than her husband does.

Elle Fanning plays the pivot from naive optimism to calculating ambition as something that happens almost invisibly, a smile that never drops even as the eyes behind it change entirely. The show's dry, anachronistic wit gives her room to be funny and frightening in the same breath, which is rarer than either alone.