Television series

Catherine the Great

Name: Catherine the Great
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2019
Cast: Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Gina McKee, Joseph Quinn, Kevin McNally

Helen Mirren commands a four-part miniseries about Catherine the Great's final years, zeroing in on her volatile affair with Grigory Potemkin. It's intimate court drama—scheming, sex, the weight of absolute power—told with the crisp intelligence and simmering tension you'd expect from prestige television. For anyone who loved the political machinations of The Crown but wants something with more explicit stakes and less restraint.

TVMaze rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy lavish costume drama where power games play out in bedrooms and council chambers alike, and you want a warm, sly lead performance carrying the whole weight of a court.

Skip it if you want a tight, fast-moving plot; this is four hour-long episodes that linger on courtly manoeuvring and the slow, sensual back-and-forth between its central pair.

What it asks of you: Four episodes of about an hour each, unhurried and talky, with plenty of intrigue to track and sex scenes that are frank rather than playful, so give it your full attention.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Crown2016

Decades of monarchy, power, and the private lives of rulers. It has the same appetite for showing you what it costs to wear the crown, shot with similar elegance and control.

But It's enormous—five seasons, 50 hours. And it's sometimes more interested in restraint than revelation, which can feel distancing.

The Favourite2018

Yorgos Lanthimos captures court intrigue, female power, and obsessive love with darkly comic brilliance. It shares Catherine's fascination with what happens when intelligent women have nowhere to put their ambition except each other.

But It's aggressively stylized and weird. If you want historical realism, this isn't it—it's a fever dream in a corset.

All the Light We Cannot See2023

Another prestige miniseries about power, desire, and the small human moments inside historical upheaval. Beautifully made, deeply felt, with excellent supporting performances.

But It's a different era and tone—quieter, more elegiac. Less court intrigue, more intimate loss.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Catherine the Great

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Rise of Catherine the Great1934

Both take Catherine as a subject, but where the miniseries mines her private heart, the film celebrates her as a legend—a different way of understanding the same historical force.

A wild Soviet comedy about Catherine the Great—irreverent, loud, and completely unconcerned with British restraint. It's another side of the same woman, told with Brechtian joy rather than intimate intensity.

But It's in French and Russian with subtitles. The humour is broad and sometimes baffling to modern viewers. It demands patience with its own strangeness.

The Scandalous Lady W2015

Natalie Dormer in a rakish, sexy historical drama about a woman on trial for adultery in 18th-century England. It has the same playful energy and refusal to judge its heroine.

But It's less polished than Catherine and sometimes feels like it's trying harder than it needs to. The budget shows its limits.

Wolf Hall2015

Dense, intelligent political drama about Henry VIII's court. Mark Rylance is extraordinary, and it captures the paranoia and chess-like plotting of absolute power with surgical precision.

But It's very interior—lots of people in rooms, not much action. The production is deliberately austere, which can feel cold.

Bridgerton2020

If you want court drama with lower stakes and higher romance, Bridgerton delivers. It's fun, sexy, and genuinely well-crafted—and it knows exactly what it is.

But The tone is completely different: lighter, more playful, less interested in the machinery of power. It might feel frivolous if you wanted something darker.

A Little Chaos2015

Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts in a period romance about a woman garden designer at Versailles. Intimate, beautifully shot, and interested in how women navigated power and desire in royal courts.

But It's gentler and more romantic than Catherine. If you want intrigue and scandal, this prioritizes emotion over politics.

The Duchess2008

Keira Knightley as the Duchess of Devonshire—trapped, brilliant, and fighting for autonomy in an unhappy marriage. It understands the particular cage of a powerful woman in an era that won't let her be free.

But It's somewhat uneven in tone, and the ending feels constrained by the need to be historically accurate rather than dramatically satisfying.

The Spanish Princess2019

Charlotte Hope and Ruairi O'Connor navigate power, love, and political alliance in Tudor England. It's colourful, energetic historical drama with a genuine romance at its heart.

But It prioritizes spectacle over subtlety, and the writing isn't always sharp enough to justify its ambition. It can feel like a step down from the best prestige television.

Outside2026

Both are studies in obsession and intellectual attraction between two people who cannot have what they actually want. Catherine does it in a palace; Outline does it in a city apartment. The engine is identical.

Rachel Weisz in a subtle, intelligent three-part drama about desire, seduction, and the conversations that change everything. No court, no costumes, but the same quality of attention to how powerful people think and want.

But It's contemporary and conversational. If you came for historical spectacle, you'll find only people talking in rooms. The pace is glacial by design.

The Leopard1963

Both centre on a powerful figure in their autumn years confronting the limits of their control. Catherine the Great finds drama in that; The Leopard finds tragedy and strange grace.

Luchino Visconti's masterpiece about a Sicilian aristocrat watching his power slip away as history moves on. It's about the end of an era with melancholy intelligence—sumptuous, slow, and absolutely assured.

But It's three hours long, very slow, and entirely Italian. If you need narrative momentum or English dialogue, this will test you. It's cinema for sitting with, not entertainment for passing time.