Starz’s Mary & George Is at Its Best When It Embraces Its Deliciously Salacious Premise

They say history is often stranger than fiction and, sometimes, they really are right. The premise of the new Starz historical drama Mary & George is bonkers enough—a woman of noble birth grooms her wildly attractive son to catch the eye of the notoriously lascivious seventeenth-century English king—that it almost sounds made up. That it’s a story that’s at least mostly based on historical fact is half of what makes it all so much fun. 

Though Mary & George initially began as an AMC series, the show is a natural fit amidst Starz’s stable of lavish, female-focused period dramas, most of which tend to tell the story of women who have been either overlooked, scorned, or otherwise misunderstood by history. At the center of this series sits Mary Villiers, a woman who rose from humble beginnings to become an influential figure at the court of King James I—largely thanks to the preternaturally good looks of her second son, George, who became one of the king’s most famous favorites—and the Countess of Buckingham in her own right. 

The Starz series takes this—let’s face it, fairly tawdry—historical premise and runs with it, leaning into the scandalously entertaining idea that Mary herself (played with flinty steel here by Julianne Moore), basically outfitted her stupidly handsome son as a honeypot to trap a king, and reaped a ton of personal rewards in the process. The extremely good-looking George (Nicholas Galitzine) seems to have little problem with this plan, both because he likes to have sex with courtiers and because he wants to help secure the financial future of his family, especially since his elder brother John (Tom Victor) suffers from fairly debilitating episodes of madness and violence. 

It’s a ridiculously soapy sort of story, and its frequently salacious subject matter means that Mary & George is generally more fun to watch than it has any right to be. This is especially true during the series’ first few episodes, during which the bacchanal vibes of King James’ (Tony Curran) court mean most of the cast is half-naked at one point or another, frolicking sexually and openly insulting one another by turns. Moore and Galitzine make an entertaining duo as they openly scheme to find ways to put George in the king’s path—sometimes literally!—and concoct outrageous plots to peel James away from his current lover, the bitchy but powerful Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson). Moore’s performance is undoubtedly the reason most will tune in to this show, and it runs the gamut from icily furious to darkly comedic, with nearly every moment grounded in a constant sense of desperate, boundless ambition. (Though I do wish the show had given Moore a little more time to explore Mary’s uncharacteristic softness toward her eldest son, as well as her repeated refusal to acknowledge the depth of John’s mental problems.)

For the most part, Galitzine isn’t asked to do much beyond look handsome, though his deft expression of George’s growing self-assurance and confidence in his ability to play the proverbial game of thrones is interesting enough to make you wish we got to see more of how his relationship with the king changed toward the end of his life. But it is Curran, a man who has done a lot of great character work on shows ranging from Doctor Who to Mayflies, who almost steals the show out from under both its titular leads. His performance manages to find an intriguing thread of melancholy underneath the king’s drunken, boisterous party persona, grounded in a tragic sort of quiet, lifelong grief—whether over the loss of his mother or of his faith in the land that raised him or both—that overshadows much of his reign. Curran’s James seems to be forever trailing an unspoken sadness along with him, and it makes him a much more sympathetic character than the series’ trailer might have led you to believe. 

Unfortunately, toward the end of the seven-episode series (all of which were available for review), Mary & George gradually loses its acerbic bite and transgressive sense of fun, slowly transforming into something that feels a lot more like a traditional period drama chronicling the end of a controversial king’s reign than the no-holds-barred hot mess it started as. It’s hard to find as much unrestrained glee in the prospect of war with Spain or the story of a dying old man being blatantly manipulated by everyone around him in a series of increasingly unfun and obvious ways. The inevitable rift that forms between mother and son as George learns that he’s capable of wielding both his relationship with James and the power it grants him for his own benefit isn’t explored as thoroughly as one might hope, though watching Moore turn Mary’s formidable rage against the person she claims to love best does make for riveting television.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Mary & George and the other female-focused Starz period dramas that have come before it is that, despite its sumptuous appearance and willingness to push all sorts of boundaries about what a show like this is supposed to be and do, it has surprisingly little of substance to say about the woman at its center. Shows like The Serpent Queen and The Spanish Princess unabashedly work to complicate our understanding of who Catherine de Medici and Catherine of Aragon most likely were, particularly when contrasted with the women history generally prefers to remember them as.

But while Mary & George attempts to do something similar with the Countess of Buckingham, it’s frequently hamstrung by the fact that it’s as much a story about a relationship—and a pair of dual protagonists—as it is about a single historical woman, and Mary, as a character, remains oddly flat and distant throughout most of the series, even as she makes dangerous choices or is forced to face disastrous consequences.

To its credit, the show is both frank and forthcoming about Mary’s seemingly bottomless greed and ambition. We see her repeatedly express incredulity that she should ever be asked to accept less than the men around her do, and as her son piles up a seemingly endless string of titles and riches for no reason other than his good looks and sexual prowess, it’s hard to argue she’s wrong.

If Mary & George has a point, it’s that it’s okay for women to want things, and to go after those things with the same single-minded purpose and unapologetic desire that the men around them do. But because the series spends so much time insisting that it’s not a serious drama but instead a sexy, transgressive romp, it’s more difficult than it should be to figure out how it wants us to understand Mary’s story, let alone her place among the pantheon of powerful women that history has done dirty. And as fun as Mary & George is, it’s hard not to wonder what the version of this show that let us really get to know her might have looked like. 

Mary & George premieres April 5th on Starz.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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