55 thoughts on “I Have Many Questions About Netflix’s ‘The Last Czars’

  1. Alexandrer III died in 1894. More later as I didn’t realize that it was as late as it is and I’m leaving for work.

  2. Nicky and Alix had a passionate sex life right to the bitter end but they had a bedroom for that sort of thing thank you very much. Alix was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter!

  3. I watched it too, for some reason. Not great, not terrible. :/

    Roman Empire is like this too! So much dramatized stuff and things changed unnecessarily.

  4. I only watched 2 episodes. The scene of them shagging on the rug was just a bit much. And the musical Anastasia (based on the animated film) closed on Broadway actually. And it was awful! They cut Rasputin and added a new villain who was in love with Anastasia but it was just boring. Part of the fun of the animated film was Zombie Rasputin and Bartok the bat.

  5. They also left out all of Alexandra’s health problems, and even though they pulled in the whole Anna Anderson myth, the actual history part of it just kept harping on Alexei the same way most other documentaries about the family have. They didn’t give any time to the sisters in which to explain that Olga and Tatiana at least did seem to have a thing for military men.

    I was ranting over the phone to my mom about this show when I watched it.

    1. I’m thinking it wasn’t so much that the sisters had a thing for military men, so much as that the only young men they had much contact with were soldiers: the Tsar’s and Grand Dukes’ ADCs, the officers of the Imperial escort and palace guards, etc, plus, in wartime, the officer patients in the hospitals where they nursed. On account of the obsessive secrecy required to keep Alexei’s haemophilia becoming publicly known, they just weren’t allowed to mix with aristocratic society in general, and just didn’t meet any non-military young men.

  6. Well, it was clunky but it got me through 4 hours of steaming vintage table linens. Yes, I have a tablecloth problem. And, of course, knowing damn well about the DNA made the framing silly. And Rasputin’s bad sticky-outie wig. And the not aging thing (yeah, just pop out a non-defective heir already!) . . .

    1. I’m transfixed. I vaguely remember my mom and her drunken friends doing some disco-tango group dance to this at some late 70’s drunken block party.

      (this and “Fly Robin, Fly”)

  7. Also, Why is Alix Fucking blonde? I have nothing against pretty blonde actresses, but Alix was a brunette FFS! Could they really not have found a brunette Russian/ German actress?

  8. The last of the Romanov dynasty fascinates me endlessly! That’s why I’m writing two biographical fiction novels based on Tsarina Alexandra and her 5 children.

  9. I watched half an hour of this. The juxtaposition of graphic nude sex scenes beneath historical narration was just WEIRD. Either be a documentary without sex scenes, or be a smutty television series without historian voice-overs.

    1. This. The first time they introduced historical documentary narration over the sex scenes and I just noped outta there. I also checked the Lover’s Knot tiara but couldn’t remember where it came from so just assumed it originated in Russia. Or a modern knockoff workshop. Shrug.

  10. RA RA RASPUTIN LOVER OF THE RUSSIAN QUEEN THERE WAS A CAT WHO REALLY WAS GONE RA RA RASPUTIN RUSSIA’S GREATEST LOVE MACHINE IT WAS A SHAME HOW HE CARRIED ON

    swishes sequined cape

  11. Netflix keeps pushing this on me and I’ve avoided it because the costumes looked shitty in the preview and the actor playing Nicholas is too hot to be believable, but I guess he has a nice butt so that’s cool.

        1. There actually is a photo of Nicholas swimming nude (in one of his daughter’s photo albums!), so you can judge for yourself.

          1. Okay, so I just did a deep dive into the photo album of the vacation Romanovs (because someone had to) and yes, Czar Nicholas was surprisingly ripped with a tight ass.

            I give it an A+ for authenticity.

  12. I love reading about the Romanovs, so I was intrigued when this series was announced, but I couldn’t even get through the first episode. Doesn’t look I missed anything by bailing out early.

  13. The costumes were off. There are two Court Gowns at the State Hermitage that based on Alix’s sketches in a letter to her grandmother, Queen Victoria, that could be the gown. Her coronation robes and gown are in the Kremlin Armoury. Both, er, all three can be found on Pinterest and their digital websites.

    Also jewellery sucked. There’s a special necklace, tiara, and earrings that each bride of the Tsarevitch wore at her wedding.

  14. Thank you for biting this bullet for me. I can expect to get asked about various things, so this will help me explain why it’s not on my watch list.

  15. Also, what the heck with the dining room floor thing? I don’t really care to see anyone’s backside, but mainly it told me a lot about the mindset of the production, and that’s why I was in no hurry.

  16. sigh
    honestly, after Rickman, who else even DARES to play Rasputin without knowing they’re going to suck?

  17. Totally like true (sorry I’ve beenreading about the third Bill and Ted movie). Rickman rocks as Rasputin.
    I couldn’t finish this as it was 1 million times worse than Mathilde. Are you saying that Raspy had sex with Alix? Never happened. He was wise enough to realise his power seemed from ‘curing’ Alexsei.
    Alexsei was the only son after ten years of marriage. And Alix was a haemophilia carrier so if she and Nicholas has another son, there was a 50-50 chance he’d have haemophilia too.

  18. Ha- we had a lot of those too, which is why we did an episode on the series and what it got wrong and right (we actually talked about why people are so fascinated w/ Anastasia). One of our guests is Philippa Hetherington, who is one of the historians featured in the series. You can check it out here. http://www.theroadtonow.com/episodes/e141

  19. This series was infuriating because it spent ages on minor crap but flew through the stuff that explained things.

    Also, I was not upset when Uncle Sergei bit it. That man was an idiot but then again, none of the Romanovs were very bright. The show boiled that all the way down to the simplest terms.

    How do you abdicate an entire throne, costing a country an entire monarchy and then not GTFO?

    1. Yeah, the problem is they never want to explain the politics and social context enough. I’m not asking them to beat us over the head with it, but enough so things make sense would be nice.

      1. The political regime in Russia has not changed since the last Romanovs were killed. Only the faces of the Chekists and Communists have changed. Even assuming that Anna Anderson was a real Anastasia, no one would officially recognize her.

        Who did the official DNA testing? Who and where found the last two bodies in 2007? And what do you say about the fact that the DNA of the found corpses does not coincide with the blood of Nicholas II on a piece of bandage stored in Japan since the time of the a failed assassination in Otsu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ÅŒtsu_incident)?

        Now the last Romanovs have been declared as saints, icons with their faces have been drawn and the country makes money from vulnerable tourists who came to Russia after watching such films. Real investigations of this murder are not profitable for the contemporary political regime.

  20. I liked this mini series. Sexual scenes and the faces of experts behind the scenes at least slightly diluted the dreary plot line, when you know for sure that there will be no happy end.

  21. Do you know the title of Orthodox Chant sang by the choir in this serial ?, Thank you

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