Amazon has set an October premiere date for the all-star anthology series, ‘The Romanoffs‘, from the creator of ‘Man Men’.
Created, written, directed and executive produced by nine-time Emmy award winner Matthew Weiner, ‘The Romanoffs’ is a one-hour contemporary anthology series set around the globe featuring separate stories about people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family. Weiner is set to direct all 8 episodes of the series.
For those of you that aren’t up on your Russian history, the Romanov family was the last royal dynasty and ruled Russia from 1613 until the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917. The following year, the Bolsheviks executed Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Tsarina Alexandra, all their children, and their servants! However, rumours and conspiracy theorists have long suggested that the daughter, Anastasia, managed to avoid the massacre, escaped and changed her name.
“We’re at a place in our history where people are looking for a close connection to their roots, and for some kind of revelation about who they are,” commented Weiner to Variety last year. “There’s great debate about who is a Romanoff and what happened to the Romanoffs. The story for me is that we’re all questioning who we are and who we say we are.”
The teaser video above doesn’t really give any more info about the show, but does reel off an impressive list of names who have joined the cast. They include Aaron Eckart, Adèle Anderson, Amanda Peet, Andrew Rannells, Annet Mahendru, Ben Miles, Cara Buono, Christina Hendricks, Clea DuVall, Corey Stoll, Diane Lane, Emily Rudd, Griffin Dunne, Hera Hilmar, Hugh Skinner, Inès Melab, Isabelle Huppert, Jack Huston, Janet Montgomery, Jay R. Ferguson, JJ Field, John Slattery, Jon Tenney, Juan Pablo Castañeda, Kathryn Hahn, Kerry Bishé, Louise Bourgoin, Marthe Keller, Mary Kay Place, Mike Doyle, Noah Wyle, Paul Reiser and Radha Mitchell.
Each of the hour-long episodes will be a standalone story with no recurring plot elements or actors, much like shows such as ‘Electric Dreams’ or ‘Black Mirror’. However, in this case, there is a thread running through the series in that each story follows a person or people who believe they are descendants of the ex-imperial Russian family.
‘The Romanoffs‘ comes to Amazon Prime UK on Friday, 12th October 2018.
