A comedy about the paranoid aftermath of the death of a tyrant

Rating: 9/10 (29 May 2019)

In Stalin's Soviet Union everybody is terrified of offending the 'great man'; especially those closest to him. They all know the slightest mistake will lead to their deaths. When he suffers a cerebral haemorrhage at his dacha members of the Central Committee hurry to the scene... if he survives they want him to know how concerned they were but should he die they want to be ready to further their own careers. He does die and his deputy, Georgy Malenkov, is declared the new leader. However he is clearly a weak man and others, notably head of the Moscow party, Nikita Khrushchev, and the head of the NKVD, Lavrentiy Beria start planning to take ultimate control. As preparations are made for the funeral the scheming only intensifies and other members of the committee try to identify who will come out on top so they can support the winner and avoid the fate of those who upset Soviet leaders.
One would expect a subject like this to be treated very seriously; after all Stalin was one of the worst tyrants the world has known and those jockeying to replace him were at least complicit in his crimes... however this portrayal is comic; and rightly so; tyrants deserve to be laughed at. The comedy is derived from the characters behaviour; each waiting to see which way the political wind blows before making a decision; often changing opinions mid-sentence. The cast, which includes plenty of well-known faces, does a fine job; always playing things straight which often serves to make things even funnier. While it is funny it is also very tense as the characters know one wrong word could be fatal. It may not be one hundred percent factually accurate but that doesn't matter too much given that it is a comedy not an historical drama. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of dark comedy.