The Last Czars: Season 1

I've been on a bit of a Russian history kick lately, so when this relatively unknown thing popped up on Netflix, I knew I'd check it out. No need to read reviews or anything; a quick look would be all I needed, and best case, it might be worth sticking around for six 45-minute episodes, hey, fine.

So the first episode began and I had one of the weirdest viewing experiences for fifteen minutes as I tried to figure out just what the hell I was watching.

Episode one begins, and there's a man in Germany in the 1920s going to a hospital where a delusional young woman is claiming to be Princess Anastasia of Russia, the lone survivor of the slaughter of the royal Romanov family in 1918 by Bolshevik forces during the Russian Revolution. Okay, sure - this is a famous old rumor and there were all kinds of false reports about Anastasia surviving the massacre. There's even a '90s non-Disney animated movie about it, so, this isn't the show making something up out of thin air - but already I'm finding it weird as hell that a show called "the last Czars" is going to take place from Anastasia's point of view.

Except, it doesn't. We suddenly flash back to Saint Petersburg in 1894 - seven years before Anastasia is born - and we witness the funeral of Alexander III, whose death at the age of 49 leaves the Russian Empire in the hands of a 26-year-old named Nicholas II. Okay, okay - this, now, this is the titular last Czar. Maybe the story's about him after all, but what was with that weird framing device? The scene isn't terrible, but all the dialogue is noticeably "intentional" rather than natural-sounding. The production value looks okay, not great, but what did I expect from a relatively unacknowledged Netflix original series?

Then a voice-over comes in, some fifteen minutes into the episode, narrating what's happening. Okay, wait, is this the man from the beginning of the episode who's sitting bedside with the Anastasia imposter? No, it's a different voice entirely. And suddenly we cut to... a talking head! And then another one. And another. Several historians just kind of describing the scene we just saw. And suddenly my understanding of this show changes again, and it's clear that what I am seeing is being presented as a documentary! But like, again, fifteen minutes into the episode.

And now there's some archival footage and there are some pictures from like, 1900, and I'm curious if the format is going to jump between dramatic reenactments of scenes and then historians describing things and adding context. And then we jump back to our actors, the new czar and his wife, and BAM, sex scene, full nudity, as they try to make an heir. Just straight up Game of Thrones-style gratuitous titties-and-moaning.

I mean this thing is just all fucking over the place - a documentary, with substantial acting and production value, framed as a mystery. It made for a very easy watch, but I can't help but wonder if it could have and would have been a much better show had it just stuck heavily to one lane instead of jumping back and forth across all three.

Here is what I think happened. I think this was originally intended as a straight up drama, and then perceived as being so fucking bad that it was completely cut up and re-edited with talking heads. If I continue down this line of almost baseless assumption, I think they had the "Anastasia imposter" framing in mind from the beginning, but made the Czar and his wife and Rasputin and their son the four most important characters. So Netflix, or whoever, said "fuck it, call it 'the Last Czars' and chop it up however you need to with talking heads filling in the gaps and explaining the bigger picture, and maybe we can salvage this thing," and then for some reason they still kept the Anastasia framing device anyway. I don't know!

Th funny thing is, I didn't hate this! I should have, and I can see what a mess it was, but whether my theory is true or not - and hey, maybe someone actually greenlit this thing with exactly this "half documentary, half mystery" pitch - it... kind of worked. It's one thing to read about or hear about or see old grainy black and white footage of the late Romanov family in the early 1900s, but to see them brought to life in a Downton Abbey-scale production with all the opulent rooms and clothes, I mean, that's something!

I dunno, man. Way too many words spent on this thing no one will remember a week from now. But it was an interesting case, that's all I'm saying. And sometimes a weird mess you can't look away from ends up making far more of an impact on you than a ho-hum series that does everything by the book.