Stream It or Skip It: 'The Last Czars' on Netflix, a Hybrid...

Published July 3, 2019, 4:00 p.m. ET

You don’t have to be a student of European history to know that the Romanov family was Russia’s last royal family, ruling until the Bolshevik Revolution deposed the last czar, Nicholas II, in 1917. The story of the Romanovs is so intriguing that Amazon and Matthew Weiner built a whole anthology series around people claiming to be their ancestors. But The Last Czars on Netflix is different. It’s a hybrid documentary-drama that starts with Nicholas II’s ascension to the throne, the family’s involvement with Grigori Rasputin, and their eventual ejection from their opulent post. Read on for more…

THE LAST CZARS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Russia, 1918. A man in a suit walks through a wooded area. “The past, it is a dangerous place,” he says in voice over.

The Gist: That man flashes through the various places where he worked as a tutor for the Romanov children. Pierre (Oliver Dimsdale) is reflecting on the fact that Russia’s last royal family came to such an ignominious end in the basement of a humble house. Then we see him in Berlin, having been told that a woman in a hospital there is Alexandria, the last surviving member of the royal family.

From there we flash back to St. Petersburg in 1894. Czar Alexander III had died suddenly at the age of 49 and his son Nicholas (Robert Jack) is set to take over as the monarchy at 26. He is nervous and doesn’t think he can do the job, though he is calmed by the presence of his fiancé Alix (Susanna Herbert). His friend Sandro (Samuel Collings) says that “You were born for this” and to use his instincts to rule. Nicky’s uncle Sergei (Gavin Mitchell) is pulling the strings, and wants young Nicky to rule in the way his family as for centuries: with an autocratic iron fist.

Meanwhile, we see Grigori Rasputin (Ben Cartwright) kicked out of his Siberian home village, leaving behind his wife and child. He goes on a pilgrimage through the forest, through all sorts of weather, and finds a monastery that offers orgiastic rituals. Those ceremonies are designed to give parishioners sins to repent, because without repentance, a person cannot be saved. This suits Rasputin well, as he’s a man of voracious appetites and an extreme ability to charm people — especially women — into seeing things his way.

On the day of Nicky’s coronation, an offering of food and gifts to peasants draws a crowd far larger than Sergei, who was managing crowd control, anticipated. Sandro tells Sergei to send out Cossacks to manage the crowd, but Sergei refuses. Thousands die in the resulting stampede, and Nicky wants to cancel all the celebrations around his coronation. But Sergei insists he attend, so he’s dancing at a ball while bodies are piled in carts. This incident earns him the nickname “Nicholas the Bloody”.

Our Take: The Last Czars is one of those Netflix shows that combines documentary-style interviews and some archival images with scripted drama. We wouldn’t exactly call those scripted portions “reenactments” because a) All the Russians speak with British accents, using dialogue we’d imagine never passed the Romanovs’ lips (i.e. a lot of f-bombs) and b) The dramatic parts take up 95% of the episode.

The series is from Nutopia, the production company that’s given us docuseries like The Great American Read and Jesus: His Life, so it knows how to do both kinds of storytelling. Here, the expert interviews are used as a good way to string together disparate parts of the Romanov story, and the story of Nicholas II’s downfall. Instead of rocketing from his father’s death to his coronation to the birth of his children, all the while trying to establish Rasputin’s story, the interviews are a good narrative glue that helps all of what’s going on, especially in the early going, make sense.

The expert interviews sound a bit scripted from time to time, and the people who are doing them blend together a bit, but that’s because the main thrust of the storytelling isn’t the interviews, it’s the dramatic scenes. And those scenes are well-done. Except for some clunky dialogue here and there and a penchant for some gratuitous nudity (see below), Jack as Nicky and Cartwright as Rasputin make for charming leads, and there definitely looks like there will be backstories about the machinations that led the Romanov family to that basement, where everyone gets killed, with the possible exception of Alexandra.

We wish that Rasputin’s path to the Romanovs was a bit better defined in the first episode, but we know that he’s fated to become a major influence in their lives, and we have faith that they’ll all be thrown together in the second episode.

Sex and Skin: For some reason, when the experts explain that Alix is one of the few Russian empresses who is in a marriage of love and not convenience, we see a sex scene between her and Nicky that starts off with a close-up of her left breast being disrobed. And, while we see a lot of Alix’s breasts in that scene, we don’t see much more than Nicky’s tush (and tattoos?). In the Rasputin orgy scene, though, we see just about everything from both men and women. Though, to be honest, that scene made the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut look sexy by comparison.

Parting Shot: When Alexandra is born, Alix says that they’re going to need help taking care of her and her older sisters. We cut to a snowy forest and a closeup of a hooded Rasputin, who will be in their lives soon.

Sleeper Star: We liked Susanna Herbert as Alix, a German-born empress who is a stabilizing force in Nicky’s life, at least for now.

Most Pilot-y Line: As Nicky is getting dressed for his coronation, Sandro says, “Looking good!”, which we can’t imagine was a common phrase in 1894 Russia. Then Nicky replies, “Feeling shit,” which we think was even less common.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The hybrid format of The Last Czars takes some getting used to, but the performances are good enough to make you forget about some of this show’s cheesier aspects and get into how Nicholas II makes the mistakes that lead to his banishment.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream The Last Czars on Netflix