The show opens with Catherine swinging gleefully and telling the other girls around her about how she will be the new Russian empress. Little did she know her life would change forever. Her future husband and the Emperor of Russia, Peter III (played by Nicholas Hoult) turns out to be abusive and doesn’t care about running the country and is the perfect impression of a spoiled man-child. When Catherine first meets Peter, he immediately remarks that she is shorter than he had thought and that she smells funny. Amidst first meeting Peter, she is also introduced to his mother, or at least the mummified remains of his mother that he keeps enclosed in a glass case. (for sure mommy issues lying there)

This show casts a clever yet unexpected lens on what it means to be queen or an Empress in a country during the 1740s, where no one accepts you. You are introduced to many unique characters such as Catherine’s servant, Marial (Phoebe Fox), Archie the Archbishop of Peter’s court (Adam Godley), Orlo (Sacha Dhawan), a member of Peter’s court as a bureaucrat and ambassador and a wacky general named Velementov (Douglas Hodge).

I would recommend this show to anybody looking for a laugh or looking to do some semi-realistic history research for school. I watched this show with my mother and I couldn’t help but be in awe of not just the actors but of the costume designers and the hair stylists as well. One thing I can say is that this show is never boring, whether you are watching it for the first time by yourself or watching it with a family member it’s always a treat.

The show has a wide range of humor subjects, but one of my favorite conversations takes place between Catherine and Peter III where Peter says “toosh” and despite Catherine telling him that the word is pronounced touchét it still takes him another second to see that he was wrong.