General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Last Czars

The Last Czars (Последние цари) is a six-part docudrama released on Netflix on July 3, 2019, that re-narrates the final decades of the Romanov dynasty, from Nicholas II's accession in 1894 to the execution of the imperial family in 1918.¹^•² The series mixes scripted dramatizations with archival photographs and footage and commentary from academic historians, a hybrid format that became the focus of much of the critical debate around it.³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six episodes of about 45 minutes, released July 3, 2019, on Netflix; TV-MA rating⁴
Production	Made by the British documentary company Nutopia, which hired a full drama team, including writers, and made the series almost entirely scripted⁵
Key creatives	Directors Adrian McDowall and Gareth Tunley; screenwriter Dana Fainaru; executive producers Jane Root and Ben Goold¹
Principal cast	Robert Jack as Nicholas II ("Nicky"), Susanna Herbert as Alexandra ("Alix"), Ben Cartwright as Rasputin, Oliver Dimsdale as Pierre⁴
Featured historians	Simon Sebag Montefiore, Dr Pablo de Orellana of King's College London, and Dr Philippa Hetherington of University College London, among others³
Reception	56% Tomatometer (9 reviews) and 60% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.3/10 on IMDb⁴
Filming	Shot in Lithuania, with Baltic Film Services as the local production company⁶

Spoilers

Story and content

The series covers the reign of Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra, the influence of the monk Rasputin at court, the upheavals of war and revolution, and the family's imprisonment and execution in 1918, ending with the episode titled "The House of Special Purpose," in which the czar abdicates, civil war erupts, and the family's fate is sealed.²^•¹⁰ One critic summarized its framing as the tragedy of a ruler whose conservatism and decision to tolerate Rasputin at court paved the way for revolution.²

The dramatization takes some liberties. The historian and novelist Gill Paul, reviewing the series, found the history on the whole accurate but noted that some characters were stripped out, most visibly in the execution scene, where only Dr Eugene Botkin joins the family rather than the other three servants known to have been present. She also noted that the series shows its Yurovsky claiming Lenin personally gave the go-ahead to execute the prisoners.³ The Russian state-owned website Russia Beyond listed the show's "48 most glaring mistakes," and one reviewer flagged an anachronism in which the Lenin Mausoleum, built in 1924, appears in a supposed photograph of Red Square in 1905.³^•²

Format and production

The series was ordered by Netflix as a drama documentary, but Nutopia made the decision to hire a full drama team, including writers, and produce it as an almost entirely scripted show.⁵ The result combines period drama sequences with talking-head interviews, contemporary photographs, and black-and-white movie-reel footage; letters between the characters are presented sometimes in English and sometimes in Russian.³^•⁷

Pablo de Orellana, a Lecturer in International Relations in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, appeared as an academic narrator and described the project as essentially a drama "ballasted" by narration by scholars. He characterized the historical content as school-level history brought to the largest possible audience, with the producers and Netflix choosing between reaching a wide audience through school-like history and drama, or reaching a specialist audience with debates most viewers would find inaccessible.⁸ Marina Alexandrova, a scholar of Russian literature who also participated, wrote that the docudrama strove to present a balanced and factual view of events and personalities without vilifying or whitewashing the historical figures.⁹

Reception

Critical response was mixed. Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 56% Tomatometer from 9 reviews and a 60% audience score, while IMDb users rated the series 7.3 out of 10.⁴ The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz called it a stylish production that "seamlessly blends remarkably detailed history with captivating dramatization."¹¹ Other reviewers were less positive: a La Nación critic wrote that the series "aspires to a laughable objectivity suitable to a documentary, at the same time that it alters historical facts and turns its characters into caricatures."¹¹

Russian reception. The Guardian's Viv Groskop, writing from Moscow, reported that the series was "the talk of the town (not in a good way)" and described it as the "Peter and Jane version of Russian history," apparently made for viewers unfamiliar with Russia. She contrasted this with the warm reception in Russia of HBO's Chernobyl, which had been praised there for its attention to period detail and its refusal to simplify events.¹² The Dutch historian Jos van der Burg likewise found that the compressed retelling of a quarter century of Russian history in about four hours worked well, while criticizing the melodrama and the lapses in historical accuracy.²

Scholarly assessment

Katharina Wiedlack, a researcher in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna, analyzed The Last Czars and the Amazon Prime anthology The Romanoffs (2018) in a 2024 peer-reviewed article. Using an intersectional lens and close viewing of the shows, she identified nostalgia for Russia's imperial legacy as a core element of both series, argued that the mourning of the last imperial family has a century-long history within American media, and connected the shows to commemorations such as the exhibitions "Russia My History," pointing to what she describes as Western complicity in Russian imperialist and colonial ideology in liberal American media.¹³

The series has also been used as a reference point in teaching and research on how popular culture shapes beliefs about the Romanovs: a University of Padua thesis took the show as the landmark for the popular, partly mythical perception of the dynasty's fall, comparing its narrative to the historical record.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Music, arts, and biographical docuseries

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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