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Kate Winslet explores how to be a good autocrat

“The Regime” is a silly show with a deadly serious point

A still from The Regime featuring Kate Winslet seated at the head of a table.
Photograph: Miya Mizuno/HBO

The capricious leader of an unnamed country in central Europe, Elena Vernham is carried around her palace in a mobile oxygen chamber. She chats with her father’s embalmed corpse. In Kate Winslet’s star turn, her lisping petulance recalls Veruca Salt, the spoiled brat in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Elena’s antics, amours and annexations are chronicled in “The Regime”, a satirical drama out now in America and in Britain soon. It is a silly TV show that makes serious points about autocracy.

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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “How to be a good autocrat”

From the March 23rd 2024 edition

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