Bob Burke

Helen Mirren is a gifted actress who invariably holds the viewer’s attention in any production she graces but she is completely wasted here. The first episode fails to show us the Catherine who was well-read and inspired by the enlightenment. Instead we get the typical, glossy HBO treatment with palace conspiracies, bloody beheadings and vigorous humping. As other critics have pointed out. Ms. Mirren is sadly the wrong choice age-wise for this role(Catherine the Great died at the age of 67;Ms. Mirren is 74). The soap opera treatment of one of Russia’s truly fascinating sovereigns was so un-entertaining that we couldn’t make it past the first episode.