Kate Winslet's 'The Regime' is dictators gone wild. Sometimes it's funny.

Do you think we have government problems? Kate Winslet would beg to differ.

The Oscar-winning actress has returned to TV with her first project since 2021's gritty detective series "Mare of Easttown" and it's an extremely different HBO drama. Instead of a hardened Philly cop with a heart of gold, this time Winslet plays a glamorously out-of-touch Central European dictator, who seesaws between insanity and inanity. It's part "Veep," part "Behind Enemy Lines" and part an eccentric play you might see at your local experimental theater company.

The effect is amusing sometimes, but cringey, confusing and a bit dull at others. "The Regime" (Sundays, 9 EST/PST, ★★ out of four), is a series of contradictions, wildly inconsistent in the course of a single episode. If you can get through the sluggish bits (particularly the last three of its six episodes), there's a lot of fun to be had until the bitter end of this absurd ride with Winslet and the rest of the talented cast.

In a world of hundreds of new TV shows a year, it's hard to recommend something that so often misses the mark. Although, if you're only here for Winslet's farcical performance, she never relents. Her tyrannical character would approve of that kind of dedication.

The tyrant in question is Chancellor Elena Vernham, the leader of a deliberately unnamed fictional Central European nation that has flavors of Poland, Russia, Argentina and a dozen other countries, making the fake politics too muddled to get anyone in trouble. But the important point is that Elena is in charge and mostly out of her mind, afraid of mold in her walls that isn't there. Delusional and narcissistic, she sings karaoke at state functions and calls her citizens "my loves."

Her privileged life as an American-backed autocrat comes to an abrupt halt when Corporal Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) enters palace life. Potentially disturbed and definitely traumatized, Herbert rises quickly in Elena's inner circle until he's convinced her to eat literal dirt and upend the country's foreign policy. But then she comes up with a few ideas to ruin the country all on her own, with disastrous and violent consequences.

"Regime" asks the question: What if a dictator was cruel, idiotic, greedy and a megalomaniac like a tabloid celebrity? What if she ruined the economy with one hand, started a war with the other and then used both to apply makeup for a "Mean Girls"-style Christmas performance? It's ludicrous and for the first few episodes very funny. But the shtick starts to get old quickly, and as Elena loses control of her domain, so the writers lose control of the plot. Creator Will Tracy co-wrote last year's "The Menu," and with "Regime" he has created another ambitious story set in a heightened reality that starts strong but doesn't stick the landing. It's fine to have a series of increasingly outlandish plot developments. The writer just has to sew it all together again at the end, and that doesn't really happen here.

Winslet is utterly dedicated to her ridiculous role. Her transformation into Elena is complete, down to the way she moves her mouth just slightly asymmetrically so that every word comes out askew. Winslet is game for everything the series throws at her, from the aforementioned karaoke to elaborate "Sound of Music"-style hairstyles and costumes to comedic sex scenes. Equally committed is Andrea Riseborough, an Oscar nominee last year, as Elena's maidservant, loyal to her Chancellor to her own detriment. The rest of the cast is equally delightful, including brief turns from Martha Plimpton (as an American diplomat) and Hugh Grant (Elena's not-so-loyal opposition).

Real politics in 2024, inside and outside the U.S., often seem ludicrous. For our fictional stories to outdo them, they have to go really big or not bother at all. "Regime" is wildly ambitious, but the result is a farce that's too farcical to be funny anymore. It has its moments but collapses under all those harebrained ideas. If the series is trying to make any overarching political point, it's lost amid the chaos.

You can only hope real-life politics won't start imitating this art anytime soon.