“The Romanoffs,” on Amazon, is Matthew Weiner’s first show since “Mad Men,” and its début feels as freighted as a Fabergé egg. There’s the natural pressure of following up on his much loved retro-Freudian period drama. There’s the fact that, at an estimated fifty million dollars, “The Romanoffs” is among television’s most expensive shows. And there’s the timing: it’s Weiner’s first series since he was accused of sexual harassment by Kater Gordon, a writer for “Mad Men.” Weiner has denied the accusation, but the issue has pervaded his publicity tour like L.A. smog.

These metatextual factors may or may not strike you as relevant to a reading of “The Romanoffs.” But there’s a certain O. Henry irony to the situation, insofar as the show, like its predecessor, is a meditation on how readily abuse can disguise itself with prestige trappings. “Mad Men” was brilliant (and darkly funny) on this particular subject, full of damaged people damaging one another on their way up the ladder. Over seven seasons, it also managed to brand itself as a sort of aspirational product, more novelistic, more cinematic, than ordinary television—a design-snob collectible. Fancy stuff, for fancy people.

“The Romanoffs,” an anthology of stories about descendants—or people who claim to be descendants—of the Russian royal family, is also a show about power. (And about fame: in a certain light, even the most decadent Russian duchess is just an influencer with a fluffier coat.) But it feels troubled by the same impostor syndrome that it seeks to explore, like a pencil sketch overwhelmed by a gold frame.

This isn’t to say that “The Romanoffs” offers no pleasures; it does. The first time I watched the three eighty-minute episodes sent to critics (along with the terrifying Weiner spoiler-warning embargo that critics grew to expect during the run of “Mad Men”), I slipped into a drugged-out trance, relaxing into the lush, stylized mise en scène that is Weiner’s trademark. In the first episode, a camera interrogating the details of a gorgeous Parisian apartment—peering at high ceilings and swanky moldings, Persian carpets and fringed curtain ties, then glancing at a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower—has the immersive feel that another director might give the Battle of the Bulge. The series was shot on location in Romania, France, and six other countries. The musical cues, too, are almost deliriously indulgent, down to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Refugee,” whose pulse drives the show’s clever credit sequence, in which blood drips through photographs of the Romanov dynasty.

Yet the stories themselves feel small. They’re fables, not operas—undeveloped vignettes with plot twists that slam the door on ambiguity. The first two installments, “The Violet Hour” and “The Royal We,” are morality tales about a battle between decency and selfishness; both rely on surprise endings that provide closure but aren’t particularly believable. There are also a few repeated motifs: each story features a lunkishly hot American man (one more of a jerk than the other, but both with a Don Draper swagger); a decent woman trying her best to communicate with someone who seems impossible to communicate with (and maybe isn’t worth it); and a cynical sexpot, who gets good lines and a camera ogling her pretty legs. It’s like a dream being replayed, with familiar figures assuming different guises. Neither of the stories was fully satisfying, but both had moments of eerie beauty—Aaron Eckhart waving his hands to music; Kerry Bishé, in a ball gown, gazing at the ocean—that, while I was watching, made them feel worthwhile. And then they dissolved.

The third episode, “House of Special Purpose”—which Amazon forbids me to spoil, lest I be slaughtered like a Romanov—is a much weirder project, a twisted backstage drama about a prestige cable miniseries on the Romanovs, which is being filmed in Europe. It’s a paranoid horror farce about sadistic interactions among worldly creatives, featuring an aging diva turned director (Isabelle Huppert), the needy actress she torments (Christina Hendricks), and a whole lot of talk about what it takes to motivate a truly good performance. A late plot twist made me roll my eyes. It’s a spooky, gamy, kinky story that felt like a lesser “Black Mirror.”

“The Violet Hour” is the most interesting of the three episodes. In it, the Swiss actress Marthe Keller plays Anushka, a Romanov descendant who abuses and berates Hajar (Inès Melab), a Muslim caretaker who has been hired by her nephew, Greg (Aaron Eckhart), to keep an eye on her. The story, which involves the inheritance of that fabulous Paris apartment, is a world-historical sparring match seen through the lens of one family—a debate about who owns what, what kind of identity counts as “real,” and who gets to be French. It’s centrally a sharp portrait of Anushka, a racist blue blood who embraces her family’s hideous history but who is also, in her way, a fragile figure; her entitlement is its own kind of disguise. “You’ve never had servants,” she sneers, when Greg’s girlfriend objects to her behavior—for her, the world is made up of masters and subjects, and if you’re not consistently cruel you’ll lose your spot. Eckhart, as Greg, is hangdog hot; Louise Bourgoin is vivid, if one-note, as Greg’s C-word of a girlfriend.

The real problem is that the story never earns the fairy-tale leap it demands that viewers accept, a development that you might begin to suspect halfway through. As likable as Melab’s performance is, and, for all the sequences we see of her at home with her family, her character never becomes much more than a symbolic “good Muslim,” an exemplary figure who patiently fields the questions of the racists she works for, a decent woman who remains loving despite the hatred directed at her. To enjoy the episode, you have to ignore that existential hollowness—and the way it structurally mirrors the racism that it claims to critique—and so I did. Maybe, like the show’s characters, I was simply willing to make a few sacrifices to linger on that nice sofa and take in that perfect view.

“Camping” is a tent-flap-slamming sex farce, an alternately mean and sweet comedy produced by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, the creative team who oversaw “Girls.” Perhaps you’ve heard of that show? Like “Mad Men,” “Girls” was a thrillingly iconoclastic series that helped transform television, but it also felt ruined by the discourse surrounding it, like a poem eaten up by angry footnotes. It was one of my favorites, and I was relieved when it ended.

“Camping,” on HBO, is more of a mixed bag, but nowhere near such a big deal, and that’s a good thing for everyone concerned, including viewers. It’s an adaptation of a British series of the same name, about a forty-fifth-birthday party gone wrong. Kathryn McSorley-Jodell, a neurotic mom Instagrammer played by Jennifer Garner, plans a back-to-nature weekend for her husband, played by David Tennant. Clutching her organizational binder as if it were a Talmudic scroll, she’s a comedic grotesque with unreachably high standards, like Larry David or Leslie Knope’s evil twin. Kathryn verges on stereotype, despite Garner’s committed performance, but when she wanders into the woods, hyped on uppers, and gets snubbed by some “glampers” (including a funny Busy Philipps), you do want to protect her. She’s a fragile bully.