After creating a juggernaut series like Mad Men, Matthew Weiner was likely given carte blanche by any studio or network to realize his most ambitious project to date. As a part of the Sopranos writing staff, Weiner pushed the envelope for dramatic cable television to transcendent heights during the medium’s heyday in 2007 with his award-winning AMC show about the inner world of advertising executives in New York in the 1960s.
After Mad Men‘s conclusion in 2015, Weiner returned three years later on Prime Video with another lavish period drama featuring a star-studded cast, including Mad Men alum Christina Hendricks and John Slattery, and a reported $50 budget across eight episodes. The Romanoffs left viewers and critics underwhelmed when it aired in 2018, but in an era where shows about royal families like The Crown grow in popularity every year, Weiner’s misfired one-season anthology drama about delusional heirs to royalty is ready for a reappraisal.
What Is ‘The Romanoffs’ About?
Across eight episodes of its lone season, The Romanoffs chronicles separate stories about people who believe they are descendants of the titular Russian royal family and its leader, Nicholas II, the nation’s last monarch until the Russian Revolution in 1917. The dense, all-star cast features the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Corey Stoll, Isabelle Huppert, Amanda Peet, Diane Lane, Kathryn Hahn, Noah Wyle (surprisingly not playing a medical professional), and many more recognizable character actors. Each episode is a standalone narrative, roughly the length of a short feature film, with the lone connective tissue being the shared sense of pride and royalty from these families across all walks of life in the present day. The show portrays a variety of people and environments, including hotel owners, suburban middle-class workers with pent-up rage and alienation, Mexican gossip columnists uncovering a malpractice scandal, and, in its most meta episode, an actor starring in a miniseries about the Romanov family.
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Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “sleeping with the fishes.”
The sheer ambition and scope of Mad Men pales in comparison to The Romanoffs, a show that took advantage of Amazon’s foray into the movie and television industry. As a commercial titan, Amazon offered seemingly endless budgets to visionary creatives to fulfill the aspirations deemed uncommercial by the studios. Weiner’s series, which remains his last screenwriting credit as of 2026, evokes a sense of unbridled freedom that is both admirable and troublesome. Across each story about people who become empowered and obsessed with their false notion of royal heritage, grandeur runs through the entire anthology, during both its lighthearted and sobering moments. More than the spiritual presence of the Russian family, episodes of The Romanoffs are connected by a sense of eternal longing and deep-seated frustration about being trapped in gilded cages, making it a proper companion piece to Mad Men.
‘The Romanoffs’ Is Worthy of a Second Look
Despite its illustrious cast and an immensely revered showrunner, most people have probably forgotten about The Romanoffs due to its short-lived run. In fairness, the series falling out of favor and fading from our collective subconscious isn’t surprising, as this eight-part anthology about dense themes told through a heavy-handed lens can become tiring. “Self-indulgence” was a term that found its way into many reviews at the time, and the series’ aggressive confrontation of privilege, heritage, and insatiable human desires only validates these critiques. Where Mad Men was always focused, Weiner bit off more than he could chew with The Romanoffs. As is often the case with many anthology shows or movies, after some time, you wish you were just honing in on one of these stories. Here, Weiner tries to interconnect episodes, but any grand thesis ultimately comes up flat.
Having said that, The Romanoffs is exquisitely crafted, putting all big-budget blockbusters to shame. Weiner and his production team stretched their $50 million budget to its maximum; every set and costume is bursting with rich texture, a remarkable feat for a contemporary series. At the very least, Weiner has an impeccable eye for visual detail, as each setting, from New York City to Mexico City to Austria, is used as a perfect backdrop. There is an inherent sadness permeating this epic treatise on the disillusionment of life in modern America, and its heartbroken characters cling to their flimsy royal lineage for validation. Commentary on the empty void of life that is crucial to Mad Men is played for operatic effect. However, the key ingredient of The Romanoffs is that its characters wish to belong inside a great Russian novel, only to experience the true mundane, unceremonious perils of life.
