‘Mary & George’ Is a Compelling Trip to the Gay 1600s

History is so boring. At least, it can be when told in the stiff cadences of a traditional costume drama—all drab rooms and clopping hooves and loaded looks meant to stand in for heat and action. Thus our culture is littered with movies and TV series that have tried, to varying degrees of success, to liven up our ideas the past, to infuse things with grit and color and messy spurts of passion. We’ve seen it done to the Tudors, to the Borgias. And now we turn our hungry eyes to the Jacobeans in the series Mary & George (Starz, April 5), which finds a novel way to stimulate modern sensibilities. 

The hook of the series—created by D.C. Moore, adapting from Benjamin Woolley’s book The King’s Assassin—is titillating. Mary & George casts us into the realm of ruffle collars and capotain hats and then says, But wait! What if everyone was gay? Or bisexual, or whatever? Even more compellingly, it’s based on what is, in fact, somewhat settled history: King James VI and I (so-called for his reigns over both England and Scotland) preferred the company of men, most especially a gorgeous young courtier named George Villiers. Another famous contemporary, Francis Bacon, is also thought to have been gay. The series then infers a bevy of buggering swains and connivers to populate these fellows’ sexual drama. 

It’s a lark to see familiar trappings so queered, especially when it is justified (at least somewhat) by historical record. Several episodes of Mary & George are directed by Oliver Hermanus, a South African filmmaker who has heretofore made grave dramas, some of them gay in theme. For a change of pace, he lets himself have fun here, setting the series bounding along with lusty heaves as George (Nicholas Galitzine) and his calculating mother, Mary (Julianne Moore), set out to seduce the king (Tony Curran) and secure their social station. 

Attention is caught quickly, pretty as George is—and horny as James is. In its first few episodes, Mary & George favors wickedness over profundity, reveling in a frothy vision of the past in which sexual mores have little bearing on those powerful enough to bend the law to their will. Mary and George don’t make headway uncontested, though. They’ve a slew of doubters and rivals to push past on their way to the center of the kingdom, a struggle that leaves them credibly bruised and battered. Both mother and son err spectacularly; they embarrass themselves, they make clumsy appeals to the wrong people. 

In these moments of squish and cringe, it seems that Moore (D.C., not Julianne) has seen The Favourite and perhaps enjoyed it a little too much. The arch, merry profanity of his series does, on occasion, feel like ersatz Tony McNamara. But if Moore can’t quite accurately ape McNamara’s sideways bite, he at least entertains. He’s aided in that by Moore the actor, who glides through the series with pleasing squint and growl. Galitzine, a rising star who recently played a gay prince in Red, White & Royal Blue, grows into the role just as George grows into his, cherubic guilelessness gradually curdling into reckless vanity. 

The show is not entirely ruthless. We are to believe that George and James do have a genuine, and rather deep, affection for one another, despite their shared knowledge that George is using the king as both lover and political leverage. Jealousy enters the picture when either man has a dalliance on the side; real tears well up any time one partner is missed, or forgiven after some terrible row. A strange romance lies at the heart of the series, while Mary pecks and meddles in its orbit—and has a same-sex love arc of her own.

That’s all well and good, this homoerotic mapping of the post-Elizabeth years. But just as George does, the series eventually becomes too grandiose in its ambitions. Midway through, Mary & George eschews the carnal intrigue and begins plodding through Jacobean history, darkening itself into a moody recitation of the downfall of Walter Raleigh and other events leading to George’s end. The show becomes yet another dutiful chamber piece, the actors mere vessels of exposition. These real-life happenings are, of course, worth covering in a series about the Villierses, but Moore is so preoccupied with getting the timeline right that he loses his grip on the engaging characters making their way across it. 

By the finale, we’re more than willing to let this dreary world slip back into the murky recesses of the past. The spark and furor is gone, replaced by the inevitability of decay, the entropy of all things. Perhaps there is a metaphor in there, an allusion to the fading of youthful beauty and verve as practical and dire matters of life conspire to kill the party. Ah well. At least Mary & George headily enjoys its salad days while they last.