Peter the Great (1986)

This four-part miniseries boasted quite a stellar cast as it explored the life and times of Czar Peter the Great. Throughout his childhood his mother Natalya (Lilli Palmer) and Prince Feodor (Omar Sharif) had to struggle to keep him safe from the conspiratorial aspirations of his sister “Sophia” (Vanessa Redgrave) who controlled the dreaded Strelsky and acted with her lover Golitsyn (Geoffrey Whitehead) on behalf of his half-witted brother Ivan (Nikolai Lazarev). In the end, both boys accede to the throne but even then Peter has to keep his wits about him as plots abound. Luckily, he has befriended the farm-boy Menshikov (Helmut Griem) so has at least one person whom he can trust, especially when his politically expedient marriage to Eudoxia (Natalya Andreychenko) proves to be fairly loveless. She does bear him a son, Alexey, and for much of the rest of this chronology we follow the development of this quite turbulent relationship, as well as see the Emperor adopt policies to enlarge his nation, enhance it’s trading opportunities and learn how to build a proper sea-going navy. To that end he tours the continent, meeting the likes of William III of Great Britain (Sir Laurence Olivier) and Sir Isaac Newton (Trevor Howard) whilst also working closely with his Scottish military mastermind Gordon (Jeremy Kemp) to break the Swedish stranglehold of the Baltic. It’s hard to go wrong with a story like this. It has half a century of betrayal, intrigue, lust, power and just about everything else from the Machiavellian guide to internecine politics. The snag, well despite Jan Niklas playing well as the younger and more impressionable Czar, that only led to an underwhelming and very wordy effort from Maximilian Schell in the title role and thence to some more generally banal dialogue. The production design is convincing, the costumes and settings all look realistic but with the possible exception of the cameos from Olivier and Howard, the whole series just lacks chemistry or menace. There are too many fades (presumably for ad breaks), the score does little to help it capture our imagination and in the end there is just something altogether too procedural about the whole thing. It’s still a decent effort, and if you’re at all interested in the man or 17/18th century European history then it’s a good introduction, but after almost eight hours I did feel a bit disappointed.