Julianne Moore leads the mostly frothily fun Mary & George, with a cracking Nicola Walker in brief support
“Are you hammer or anvil, or both?”
The (limited) success of shows like Harlots and The Great clearly inspired a whole lotta programmers to find similarly raucous takes on historical dramas and since there’s a whole lotta streaming services desperate for a hit show to help them stand out in such a crowded market, there’s been a whole lotta attempts to replicate its impact.
From Becoming Elizabeth to The Serpent Queen to My Lady Jane, revised takes on the established storytelling of patriarchal history have been all the rage and Mary & George is no exception. Created by DC Moore from Benjamin Woolley’s book The King’s Assassin, this show follows Mary Villiers’ ambitious plans to inveigle her way into the 17th-century royal court by pimping out her second son George to become the royal sidepiece to King James VI and I.
With Julianne Moore as Mary and Nicholas Galitzine as George, later to become 1st Duke of Buckingham with his mother as Countess of Buckingham, there’s some serious star wattage in the casting, Tony Curran plays the randy royal. Their brightness is needed in a show that is terribly gloomy, so many scenes so dimly lit that it is seriously distracting even if it is more ‘authentic’ (the less said about historical accuracy the better though).
It’s largely frothily good fun. George gets packed off to France to prep him for the ways of seduction by participating in multiple orgies; Mary negotiates her way out of bad marriages (an ‘accident’ on the stairs) to more financially appealing ones whilst conducting an affair with a brothel madam. And once the King’s attention is hooked by George’s fine form, the pair scheme and manipulate their way to find and hold onto positions of increasing power.
Real pleasure comes in the quality of the supporting cast, though too many of these players get too little time amidst all the fast-moving scheming. Laurie Davidson is great as the highly jealous Robert Carr, the king’s favourite supplanted by George, as are Simon Russell Beale as the ailing George Villiers who doesn’t mind the stairs, Angus Wright’s officious Sir David Graham, Kate Fleetwood’s bawdy Cunning Mary, Joseph Mawle’s deeply impactful Sir Walter Raleigh.
Fortunately we get a bit more of a superb Nicola Walker as the ferocious Elizabeth Hatton (“look, even your phlegm is off-colour), the mother of a potential match for one of George’s brothers. Overall, the show is carried by Moore’s star power, impeccable accent work and an emotional depth that Galitzine struggles to match, meaning his connection to Curran’s excellent James never quite reaches its full tragic potential.
