Why you should watch… Elle Fanning fight to seize the crown in The Great – harpersbazaar.com

Its very easy to be dismissive of period dramas. At their most stuffily conventional, these shows create a whitewashed world of upper-class manners where conversations are mealy-mouthed, love lives strain against buttoned-up puritanism and there is usually someone tinkling away on a pianoforte for no particular reason. The poster for the 10-part series The Great a wonderfully oxymoronic image of its star Elle Fanning cinched into a corset and wearily flipping off the camera promises to blast the cobwebs from what can be a tiresome genre. And boy does it deliver.

This is, as each episodes disclaimer warns, the occasionally true story of Catherine the Great (Fanning, shucking off her butter-wouldnt-melt persona with aplomb). A dreamy, idealistic teenager, she imagines a charmed life for herself as Russian empress in which she will be free to propagate Western ideas on philosophy, literature and science to her people. After marrying into the royal family, she is horrified to discover that her new husband Peter (Nicholas Hoult, deliciously odious) is a mercurial buffoon whod much rather humiliate courtiers and fool around with his mistress than modernise his country. It may be the age of enlightenment but Russia is wilfully living in the darkness and Peter is to blame.

The Great is the brainchild of Tony McNamara, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind The Favourite, and his latest project shares that films mischievous spirit. The palace is a playground of debauchery, doused in vodka and decadence. During one banquet, a string quartet is instructed to play louder to muffle the sounds of their emperor loudly having adulterous sex in an adjacent room; at another, guests are ordered to gouge out the eyes of decapitated heads served alongside their dinnerplates. The Great takes liberties with realism, tossing in anachronisms that give the show a modern sensibility.

Being lax on historical accuracy allows McNamara to mine the series for laughs, and there are plenty of them. Most of its comedy derives from the clash between how we expect 18th-century royalty to behave and how they actually do. The genre-upsetting writing is so pleasingly vulgar, both in terms of its scatological humour (the bed chambers soon descend into a swirling morass of vomit, ejaculate and diarrhoea) and blue language. Therein lies its appeal. The shuddering thrill at hearing characters, in powdered wigs and laced-up bodices, effing and blinding as profusely as mobsters in a Scorsese movie cannot be overstated. Much like The Favourite before it, The Great trades in obscenity and hedonism, cheekily undercutting traditional period-drama politesse.

The shows unconventional approach is also apparent in its presentation of Catherine. Nominally, she is the woman behind the man; in reality, shes plotting to overthrow him and seize control of his empire. Perhaps because she was a child star, Elle Fanning has almost exclusively played ingnue roles that never really require more than sweetness from her. In The Great (for which she also serves as executive producer), the actress unleashes a whole new side of herself, flushed cheeks glowing devilishly against alabaster skin.

She initially endows Catherine with the genial navet we have come to anticipate from an Elle Fanning character. By the end of the pilot, hardened by Peters oafishness, her eyes glint with menace while she smiles sanguinely. Appearances, she learns, are what count at Russian court, and in order to get what she wants she must conceal her true feelings. This dance between seeming and being forms the basis of Fannings most mature performance to date. And, lets face it, its a joy to watch her give in to baser urges for a change (the moment when she bites a man for placing a shushing finger on her lips is a real highlight).

As on-screen husband and wife, Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult are perfect foils for one another: where he destroys, she creates; where he is ignorant, she is knowledgeable. Their whip-smart back-and-forth is like a sweary screwball comedy, laden with double entendre and throwaway insults (Our fucking is as dull as a beaver chomping at a log). Hoult aces the deadpan delivery of these jokes, while also scratching at Peters insecurity. When not striding naked along palace corridors or bumbling through military-strategy meetings, the emperor worries that he is not living up to the legacy of his father Peter the Great a legitimate concern since his wife secretly calls him Peter the Not Quite Adequate. The actor lends depth to what could have been a caricature of a villain, adding a smidge of pathos to the characters officiousness.

Funny and fantastically engaging, The Great is an orgy of excess where the only leverageable commodity is power. Advisors, seeking their own political advancement, seesaw between loyalty and manipulation, their slippery allegiances as changeable as Peters temper. In the capable hands of Tony McNamara and his two nimble leads, 18th-century Russia has never been so outrageously bawdy and back-stabbing. Its all the better for it.

The Great will be available to stream on Starzplay from Thursday 18 June.

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Why you should watch... Elle Fanning fight to seize the crown in The Great - harpersbazaar.com