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Elle Fanning plays Catherine, a naive, intrepid German from a family of minor nobility, who arrives in Moscow to marry her second cousin, the Emperor Peter (Nicholas Hoult). But horrors! Peter is an entitled brat, who treats women as sexual objects and thinks that all his jokes are hilarious.
Naturally, Catherine the Snowflake is outraged. She's even more appalled to realise that none of the women in Peter's court is allowed to read. 'Women are for seeding, not reading,' snorts Peter. This is 1745 – has he never heard of gender equality?
This ten-part series, which first aired on the streaming video channel Hulu (owned by Disney) last May, is billed as a comedy-drama. Sample gag, from Emperor Peter: 'I do not like all the limbless soldiers in the palace. It casts a pall over the balls if they can't dance.' That's about as good as it gets.