When we watch British period dramas that take place during the from the 19th century on back, they often feel the same. You know, wigs, girdles, harpsichords and touch dancing. But when a show inserts lots of sex into the mix, we of course get interested. A new series based on a nonfiction book about a 17th century royal love affair fits this bill.
Opening Shot: A stormy night in 1592. A baby cries as a fire rages in the fireplace.
The Gist: The baby is the second son of Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore); her handmaidens drop the newborn right after they deliver him. But Mary picks the baby up, shoos off the maiden looking to cut the umbilical cord and tells the baby that, as the second son, he’ll amount to nothing because he isn’t his father’s heir. But she bonds with it and names him George, after his father (Simon Russell Beale).
Twenty years later, in 1612, Mary walks through some snowy woods and finds George (Nicholas Galitzine) hanging from a tree. She cuts him down, completely unmoved by her son’s suicide attempt. She’s sending him to France to be schooled in refinement so he can come back and marry, in his words, “some awful rich wife and milk her fat fucking dowry.” He’s in love with Jenny (Emily Fairn), one of the young handmaidens, but again, his mother is unmoved. “That’s not how it works; that’s not how a single thing fucking works.”
Mary is looking for someone to ensure her family’s fortunes, and George is her best hope. Oldest son John (Tom Victor) is “empty,” code for not mentally capable. But, given how his abusive father feels about the move, he vows that “as long as Father draws breath”, he won’t have to go.
One problem: George just died. He was a syphilitic mess, anyway, but in a typical knock-down-drag-out, he and Mary took a tumble down the stairs, and George ended up mortally injured. When Mary finds out from her lawyer that he left the house to a cousin, who agrees to let Mary pay rent to stay. Problem is, he also left tons of debt and no money. So, Mary decides to find another aristocrat to marry. She finds one in the many-married Sir Thomas Compton (Sean Gilder). All she asks of him is a stipend for George to travel to France.
Despite his gut-clenching desire not to go, Mary sends George off to France. When he meets his tutor, Jean (Khalil Gharbia) on the shore of the English Channel, he immediately pukes. And when Jean takes him to his room through rooms of people having sex — men and men, women and men, etc. — George is offended. But, as Jean says, “It’s France.”
Meanwhile, representatives of King James I (Tony Curran) want the monarch to stay at the Compton estate; Compton wants no part of it, but Mary convinces him, mainly because she wants to be in James’ royal presence. Compton tells her that she’s got “one too few penises and two too many tits” to seduce him, if that what she’s after. Compton reluctantly agrees.
When the king shows up, his representative, Robert Carr, the Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson), tells everyone that the monarch doesn’t want to be seen. Still, Mary sneaks down to the king’s quarters, where he’s arguing with a male paramour. James’ only English court member, Sir David Graham (Angus Wright), tells Mary that James, who is Scottish, wants more English people in his court. This gives Mary an opening to offer up George, who is due back from France with a new posture and attitude, especially towards sex.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Any sex-forward British period drama is going to be compared to Bridgerton, and Mary & George certainly qualifies, even though it takes place hundreds of years prior.
Our Take: Mary & George was created by D.C. Moore (Killing Eve), loosely based on the non-fiction book The King’s Assassin by Benjamin Woolley. That book was about the affair between George Villiers and King James I, but what Moore seems to be concentrating on is how that affair was more or less the product of George’s social-striving mother Mary, and how cunningly she was able to insert her son into the royal court.
Moore (no relation to Julianne, who is also an executive producer) isn’t shy about what Mary & George is. It’s not a show about some unrefined person being groomed for high society; it’s not concerned with scenes where people touch-dance to harpsicord music. The series is a 17th century-set soap opera, pure and simple, with a fantastic performance by Julianne Moore at its center.
We personally don’t care if the show drops a lot of f-bombs or shows everyone having sex with each other. Accuracy is not something we crave in a show like this; in fact, most shows that take place during this time period bore us to tears. This show is anything but boring, and if D.C. Moore has to salt up the language and sex up the discourse to make it accessible, so be it.
Does it get to be too much sometimes? Sure. The Eyes Wide Shut-esque scene where George walks through an orgy to get to his room just feels like sensory overload. But we get that sometimes there needs to be that sensory overload on the journey to get to the destination, which is George becoming sexually confident enough to make his dalliance with King James a possibility.
Julianne Moore is a force of nature, and her scenes with Galitzine are fun to watch. Mary has an affinity to her second son that she really doesn’t have towards her other children, and he’s her best hope to get her close to royalty. We suspect that George will grow in his new role, but Mary will always be pulling the strings, and with the Oscar winner in the lead, Mary’s flintiness and practicality will always be at the fore of this series.
Sex and Skin: Lots of it. And we see full frontal male nudity in a scene where Jean encourages George to join him and another man in a threesome.
Parting Shot: “He will be yours, mine… ours,” Mary says to George about King James.
Sleeper Star: Sean Gilder is pretty funny as Sir Thomas Compton, who seems to be one of the few people in Mary’s orbit who can stand up to her. Their banter is sparkling because Compton and Mary know what their relationship is based on.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Get rid of him. He reeks,” George says to the servants about his dad’s body.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Mary & George is sexy and soapy, and the show refreshingly doesn’t pretend to be anything more than what it is.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.