HBO’s ‘The Regime’ Is No ‘Succession’

“Never breathe in her direction. Stay calm. Don’t vomit.”

These instructions are our first introduction to Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet), the egomaniacal and bumbling authoritarian leader of a fictional European country at the center of the new HBO satire “The Regime.”

Vernham goes to great lengths toward maintaining the performance of governing with no real investment in actual governance. As this cartoonishly mercurial figure, whose affected verbal tics involve speaking out of only one side of her mouth, Winslet adds another role to her career of chameleonic and daring choices and delivers with her typical aplomb.

Unfortunately, her mesmerizing performance isn’t enough to lift the series’ six episodes out of their frequent doldrums and glossy excess. Created by “Succession” writer Will Tracy, this new limited series, on paper, seemed like a promising successor to “Succession,” as well as “Veep.” Its trailer certainly hinted at something resembling a marriage of those celebrated and prescient shows. But “The Regime” lacks both the biting wit and the surgical precision of its predecessors.

To be fair, “Succession” and “Veep” are both high bars to clear. Nearly a year after its final season, the hole left by the former’s pitch-perfect conclusion still feels unfilled. And throughout the last half decade or so, it has been common on the internet to grimly joke that “Veep” is actually a documentary, in response to various political events both in the U.S. and abroad.

There’s also the high bar set by Winslet’s last HBO limited series, “Mare of Easttown,” which became a word-of-mouth hit in 2021, so much so that its final episode crashed the network’s streaming service (then known as HBO Max). With each episode, Winslet peeled back further layers of her character, elevating what could have been a standard procedural about a police detective investigating grisly crimes while dealing with demons of her own.

Premiering Sunday, “The Regime” is yet another vehicle for her talent, set against what seemed like another intriguing and meaty premise. However, and strangely, for a series with just six episodes, that premise quickly runs out of steam.

The aforementioned instructions about Vernham, given by Agnes (Andrea Riseborough), the head of operations at the chancellor’s palace, are directed at Cpl. Herbert Zubak (Matthias…