Do as Kate Winslet says in The Regime

The Regime opens with Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) surviving an assassination attempt during her unnamed, Central European country’s Victory Day celebrations. Seven years back this young doctor from Rinnburg “with the brilliant eyes” deposed former liberal Chancellor Edward Keplinger (Hugh Grant) and his cabinet. While Elena crows about her victory, behind palace doors her country’s economy is in dire need of a cash injection. 

It’s unfortunate, then, that Elena falls under the sway of violent radical Corporal Herbert “Butcher” Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) – the maniac who fired the first shot at protesting miners during the Site Five massacre – just as the CEO of a Texan mining operation demands a majority share in their partnered cobalt mining operation. To the growing horror of her cabinet, her husband Nicolas (Guillaume Gallienne), and her palace manager, Agnes (Andrea Riseborough), Elena has a new fixation with Zubak, independence and glory. Bring on the peasant chic and rousing speeches!

Binge The Regime Season 1 on Showmax now.

A list of demands

Chancellor Elena Vernham wouldn’t consider herself unreasonable, for an authoritarian leader. She doesn’t expect bowing, scraping and flattery or even heads on sticks. Goodness, no. But she is rather particular about some things. Ignore these 15 demands at your peril…

1. Mould-free air: Zubak’s first job is walking ahead of Elena with a hygrometer, a gadget that’s meant to measure moisture levels in her palace (which has been stripped down and deep cleaned three times in the past three years), for the first hint of conditions ripe for mould. Following the death of her father Joseph (Finbar Lynch) from lung disease, Elena has developed a horror of “toxic air”. If Elena tells you that she smells mould, nod and tell her that you smell it, too.
2. Dehumidifiers in every room: Until everyone’s facial skin pulls taut like a mummy’s.
3. Air conditioning: As Elena is battling with perimenopause, the palace is kept ice cold. But don’t you dare shiver. If she is hot, we are all hot. This is a shared reality.
4. No hand contact: Elena keeps a bodyguard to “strongly dissuade” anyone who tries for a handshake. 
5. Fresh breath: With her horror of germs and toxic air, Elena is quick to turn up her nose at all iffy smells. Agnes (Andrea Riseborough) advises, “If she passes, hold your breath. If she talks to you, cover your mouth. If you’re in a room together, keep your mouth shut and suck a mint.” 
6. Chew quietly: Elena fired her previous moisture checker because his jaw clicked when he ate.
7. Don’t sniff! Elena pointedly asks Zubak about his sniffing, “You’re not aware of it? How can you not be aware of it? You’re not aware there’s something you do many times a day that you never used to do? May be a bit irritating that you won’t acknowledge that you do it.”
8. Get to the point: As Elena tells her cabinet, “These need to be briefer, these … briefings.”
9. Be normal, successfully: Yes, the Chancellor is attending the briefing via video from her bathtub filled with ice, but she warns her ministers, “I don’t need your quiet, worried faces. You all need to be better at being normal. When you’re not normal, it makes me feel like you’re telling me that I’m not normal … and it makes me distrust all of you and want you to be dead. So, just be better at being normal.”
10. Know your place: “You do not urge me to do anything. You just whisper your sweet nothings and then vanish into the gardenias,” Elena warns one councillor. 
11. Mustard on the chest, potato in the vest: As Elena turns to folk medicine, she thrives on a regime of steamed potatoes to combat cold and mould, along with sperm whale oil for her skin. 
12. A delicious breakfast of dirt: Fully under Zubak’s sway, Elena demands that her palace chef prepare a plate with “three distinct soils from three distinct local ecosystems.”
13. A dungeon for her pets: Why send disgraced politicians to the country mansions when you can keep them much, much closer and keep fighting with them? Oh, your hands are tied in this matter? Shame about that.
14. The respect of the United States of America: Elena complains when the US sends senator Judith Holt (Martha Plimpton) to renegotiate the cobalt deal with her instead of the President or Vice President, calling Judith “some frequent flyer corn f***** from the farm states.”
15. Don’t call it an invasion! When Elena’s forces move to take control of the disputed Faban Corridor she explains, “No one is proposing an invasion. No one. This is an expression of peace and love towards our countrymen across the border.” This manoeuvre doesn’t violate international law either, according to Elena, because, “The agreements to which you refer are archaic and, therefore, not legal.” The word is reunification, not annexation. 

Most of all, don’t believe what you read in the press. This is Elena’s reality, and what she says (or sings) is the only truth. “There is no unrest. There are no guerrillas. There is only a renewal of our love … Our economy is strong. Our workers are happy … Any so-called demonstrations in sugar beet country are nothing but cheap American performance art,” she insists. 

Anything to say in your defence? “I can’t help that I’m interesting and you’re not,” Chancellor Elena Vernham tells us. Binge The Regime Season 1 on Showmax now.

Dabble in politics

These five series and movies have our vote if you enjoy politics, satire and drama with a bite.

Veep Seasons 1-7

US Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won six Emmy Awards for her performance) is surrounded by incompetence, and she’s raging about it in this hilariously profane and endlessly quotable look at the clawing greed and ambition in the White House that feels more like a documentary every day.

Selena is torn between her lust for power, and her complete contempt for the “idiot” voters and real people she has to pander to in her speeches to win votes. But she might have even more contempt for her own staff, including Chief of Staff Amy Brookheimer (Anna Chlumsky), personal aide Gary Walsh (Tony Hale), and deputy director of communications Dan Egan (Reid Scott). 

Parks and Recreation Seasons 1-7

When Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) lands a job in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana, she uses the full force of her sunny personality, faith in humanity, and sheer determination to give the people what they want … budget permitting.

This might be a comedy, but it’s also one of the realest-ever takes on grass roots democracy, red tape and bureaucratic inertia. Leslie battles pushback in every project from the department staff including its contrarian libertarian director Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), cynical intern April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza), and the only living human brain donor, Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), along with largely unhelpful local government officials like jaded city planner Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider). 

White House Plumbers Season 1

Based on Egil and Matthew Krogh’s 2007 book, Integrity, this darkly comic series centres on the dynamic between two of the lead Watergate bungling burglars: disgraced former CIA staffer E Howard Hunter (Woody Harrelson, True Detective S1) and Ex-FBI agent and vain, wanna-be spy G Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux, The Leftovers).

Series director and executive producer David Mandel (co-creator of Veep) focuses the story on the goonery and buffoonery that lead to these super-spies accidentally toppling then-US President Richard Nixon while trying to help him cheat. It’s one of those shows in which the most bizarre details are closest to the truth.

The Dictator

Sacha Baron Cohen wrote and stars in this pitch-dark political satire as dictator Admiral-General Haffaz Aladeen, the nepo baby ruler of the fictional North African Republic of Wadiya. Haffaz comes to the United States to address the United Nations Security Council in New York. But he’s kidnapped shortly after arriving and replaced with a dimwitted body double, Efawadh.

Meanwhile Haffaz escapes his kidnappers to wander the streets of New York, meeting ordinary Americans along with refugees from his regime, who populate the city’s “Little Wadiya” neighbourhood. When Haffaz falls in love, could personal issues shift his political views? While Sacha claims to have based his performance on Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, the film is dedicated to North Korea’s Kim Jong-il.

The Campaign

Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis play two politicians from North Carolina who’re competing to take their district’s seat in Congress. When Democrat Cam (Will) botches his re-election campaign with an infidelity scandal, corrupt businessmen Glenn and Wade Motch (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) secretly hire campaign manager Tim Wattley (Dylan McDemott) to transform tour guide Marty Huggins (Zach) into the ultimate, unbeatable Republican candidate to go up against Cam.

Local politics has never been dirtier as the two embark on a race to the bottom to see who can use the most underhanded tactics to ruin reputations, from Cam trying to brand Marty a communist using a story he write back in primary school, to Marty turning Cam’s son against him and getting him to call Marty “dad” on TV. 

Also watch

Explore a more serious side of power struggles, personality and politics in the following 10 dramas.

Cobra Season 1: British political thriller. Prime Minister Robert Sutherland (Robert Carlyle) tackles a country in crisis after a solar flare blows the UK’s electric grid and navigation systems. It’s a world without WiFi! 

Rome Seasons 1-2: Historical drama set in Ancient Rome during 1 BCE, as Rome transitions from republic to empire. The story follows both the common folk, represented by soldiers Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson), and the political elites like Julius Caesar (Ciarán Hinds), whose every decision impacts their lives. 

The Wire Seasons 1-5: Writer-producer David Simon and an all-star cast explore the political and financial forces that turned the city of Boston into a war zone in the early 2000s.

The Plot Against America Season 1: This series based on Philip Roth’s alternate history novel of the same name imagines an America in which racist, eugenicist Nazi sympathiser Charles Lindbergh becomes US President in 1940, and quickly plunges the country into fascism. 

Chernobyl Season 1: Docu-drama Chernobyl is a tense, to-the-minute study of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in (then-Soviet) Ukraine. When self-serving politicians determinedly ignore both expert warnings and social responsibility during and after the meltdown, the impact is devastating.

The Diplomat Season 1: Six-part political crime drama series set in Barcelona. British Consul Laura Simmonds and Deputy Consul Alba Ortiz (Serena Manteghi) work to help British citizens who’ve run into trouble in Spain, with help from local Detective Inspector Castells (Isak Férriz). 

John Adams Season 1: This historical drama mini-series about the second-ever US President (Paul Giamatti), and the first 50 years of freedom from British rule in the US, is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name written by historian David McCullough.

Show Me A Hero Season 1: This docu-drama series, adapted from the book of the same name by New York Times writer Lisa Belkin, and produced by David Simon (The Wire), zooms in on how Nick Wasicsko, the mayor of Yonkers, got stuck between a federal court order to build public housing, and the violent bigotry of the city’s rich and powerful white elite. 

The Independent: Political thriller movie. Reporter Eli James (Jodie Turner-Smith) gets caught up in a conspiracy after she breaks the news that Olympian, author and Yale graduate Nate Sterling (John Cena) is running as an independent candidate in the upcoming US election against the Republican party’s first-ever possible female president, Senator Patricia Turnbull (Ann Dowd).

The Republic Seasons 1-2: South African drama series. (Fictional) new South African President Lufuno Mulaudzi (Florence Masebe) tackles the chaos and corruption that her predecessor, Hendrik Mbuli, left in his wake after getting fired for looting state funds.