Mary & George is one of those shows that comes along that I always worry I can’t be unbiased about because it’s precisely my kind of television show. Starz‘s latest provocative period drama ditches the Tudor era or pages of Philippa Gregory to take us inside the scandalous court of King James I, the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I’s Stuart successor. However, this historic drama isn’t focused on who wears the crown as much as who is plotting to be in the king’s bed. Mary & George follows the toxic co-dependent relationship of the scheming Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore) and her breathtakingly handsome son, George (Nicholas Galitzine). Between Mary’s ruthless hunger for power and George’s irresistible charm, the two manage to claw their way to the top by positioning George as King James’s (Tony Curran) latest and greatest favorite. Mary & George is a seedy, seductive drama that sheds light on the rampant homosexuality and omnipresent corruption seething through the historic court that might have brought us the King James Bible (as a measure of face-saving propaganda), but has been woefully under-explored in drama. Punctuated by gorgeous performances, sumptuous costume design and a whole lot of f-bombs, Mary & George is, as I said up top, my kind of TV show.
Mary & George was created by British playwright D.C. Moore and is based on Benjamin Woolley’s non-fiction book, The King’s Assassin. The seven-part series is set in the early 1600s, aka the Jacobean era, the time immediately following Elizabeth I’s death and the end of the Tudor dynasty. The Scottish-born King James I (Tony Curran) has managed to maintain control of England despite his foreign birth and, more pertinently, his infamously shifting moods and homosexual tendencies. James soon becomes the perfect target for the ambitions of widow Mary Villiers and her beautiful boy, George.
Starz’s new series begins, correctly enough, at the very beginning of Mary and George’s relationship. We see the cynical Mary cradle her newborn baby boy and explain it would be a kindness to just have let him die on the floor where a klutzy maid just dropped him. After all, he is a second born son. There will be nothing for him but scraps in life. Still, something stirs in Mary as she holds this child. She names him, “My George.” Next thing we know, we’ve leapt twenty years in the future. Because her firstborn John (Tom Victor) is afflicted with some undiagnosed mental issue, the outrageously handsome and kind-hearted George is her last hope for advancement.
Mary insists on sending George to France, where the young man undergoes a continental sort of polishing school. (Tudor drama nerds and history buffs might recall that both Boleyn sisters, Mary and Anne, were also sent to France for “finishing” before being launched into court with the aim of seducing King Henry VIII.) George not only comes home with a newfound level of sophistication, but also more confidence in his sexual prowess. “Bodies are just bodies,” a French lover tells him, unlocking the key to his swagger for the rest of the series.
While George was in France, his mother was using her new husband’s connections to score a visit from the King. The royal soon proves to be both a recluse and a disappointment. His every move is controlled by his latest favorite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davies). Mary takes a risk and sneaks to the king’s side of the house, where she encounters Somerset and promptly realizes he’s terrified of being replaced by a hotter, younger model. Somerset claims there’s no such man. But Mary knows her George exists and that she exists to push her family’s fortunes no matter the cost.
Sure, you can google George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham to find out what happens next in history, but Starz’s Mary & George takes those cold sentences and brings them to vivid life. Moore’s scripts are full of dialogue that merge the poetic and the profane, with gorgeously profound phrases existing side-by-side with language you’d find in a Tarantino film. Sex is a tool, pastime, weapon, or sacred gift. Alliances are forged and then burned; men are murdered with poisoned prunes; each episode contains twists that reveal shocking betrayals or tease truly broken hearts.
What keeps this sensuous drama from veering into tawdry territory are the triumvirate of performances anchoring it. Julianne Moore out-“Gillian Andersons” Anderson herself, portraying Mary Villiers as a woman whose cold exterior hides a fiery ambition for those she loves. Tony Curran takes a confounding historic figure and imbues him with a tenderness that explains his hypocrisies down to psychological trauma and a deep, impossible hunger to trust those he loves. Most revelatory, though, is Nicholas Galitzine as George. Sure, the English actor has been dazzling in a wide array of recent roles — from a repressed gay prince in Red, White, and Royal Blue to an idiot quarterback in Bottoms — but Mary & George lets Galitzine reveal the complexity necessary to make the leap from heartthrob du jour to mature movie star. You never quite know if George loves James or is playing the part to use him, but you know that’s exactly what Galitzine wants you to see. The pin-up’s officially got the goods to hack it opposite Oscar winners.
Mary & George takes bold swings, with regard to its approach to the period’s details and to its depiction of history. These swings are wild enough that it could off-put purists of the genre, but I was delighted. Mary & George is the type of show pushing the period drama genre where it needs to go in the future: to a vision of the past that shows us how similar it really was to our present.
Mary & George Episode 1 premieres on the Starz app on Friday, April 5 at midnight ET. It will debut linearly on Starz on Friday, April 5 at 9 PM ET.
