I finally have a miniseries in English to rec to you: Peter the Great, starring Maximilian Schell as older Peter, Jan Niklas as younger Peter, Vanessa Redgrave as Peter's older sister and enemy Sophia the regent, Lilli Palmer as Peter's mother, Helmut Griem as Peter's bff Menchikov, Hanna Schygulla as Martha/Catherine I., and a lot of English actors like Trevor Howard and Laurence Olivier in cameo roles as various European dignitaries. Poor Alexeji is actually played by a Russian Actor, Boris Plotnikov. It's a very Euro 1980s production with cheesy soundtrack and international cast, but the acting is solid, it's based on Robert Massie's biography, and they go for morally ambigous yet compelling in general with Peter. (Alexej's death is not as graphic as it might have been, given this was shown at 8 pm, but it's clear how it came about.)