The Regime review: Kate Winslet has a lot of fun in strange, surreal and incoherent satire
“Never breathe in her direction, stay calm, don’t vomit.” This advice is dished out in hushed tones to anyone who enters the presence of Elena Vernham, the capricious, increasingly unstable “chancellor” of the unnamed nation, somewhere in “Middle Europe”, where Sky and HBO’s surreal comedy The Regime is set.
Vernham, played by an imperious , boasts a set of intricately plaited blonde wigs, a wardrobe of colour-blocked power suits, a laissez-faire attitude to her citizens’ personal freedoms, a serious case and the glass case from . Her dad was formerly a political player in a once-fringe right-wing party (there are obvious here), but died of a lung infection. So as opens, Vernham is obsessively attempting to rid her presidential palace of the mould spores she is convinced will kill her.
