It’s hard to get a handle on “Mary & George,” the 17th-century historical drama that premieres on Starz this week after last month’s initial run in the U.K. The tale of how the title characters (Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine) enmeshed themselves in the court of King James I (Tony Curran) through George’s seduction is intricate enough on its own, packing a dizzying array of alliances, betrayals, breakups and reconciliations into seven 50-minute episodes. But it’s the tone creator D.C. Moore strikes in his adaptation of Benjamin Woolley’s nonfiction account “The King’s Assassin” that’s most difficult to pin down. Darkly comic and lushly erotic, both boldly anachronistic and surprisingly true to history, “Mary & George” takes the better part of its duration for the viewer to internalize its offbeat, unpredictable rhythms. By then, what could be a standard story about the overlap of sex and ambition has wormed its way deep under our skin.
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The irreverent period piece (“Dickinson,” “Our Flag Means Death”) has flourished in recent years, but “Mary & George” most resembles the 2018 Yorgos Lanthimos movie “The Favourite,” another account of an English monarch’s same-sex attraction with an equally jaundiced view of human nature. (Olivia Colman’s Oscar-winning Queen Anne was, in fact, James’ great-granddaughter, their reigns each bookending the country’s Stuart dynasty.) After succeeding the childless Elizabeth I to become the nation’s first Scottish king, James has sealed himself inside a bubble of profligate hedonism, preferring his court to be a place of “peace and play.” “He forgets himself to his own indulgences,” one courtier observes — leaving James vulnerable to the influence of those who can attract and hold his fickle attention.
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Moore’s most recent leading role was in Todd Haynes’ “May December,” and her minor aristocrat Mary Villiers has a fair amount in common with that film’s thinly veiled riff on Mary Kay LeTournau. Mary, too, is an unrepentantly selfish person with nonexistent boundaries and a fixation on the sex life of a much younger man. Except in this case, the man in question isn’t a romantic partner — he’s her own child, whose aesthetic appeal she hopes to exploit for her own family’s gain. “Second sons are typically a waste of life,” Mary states with typical ice. Except George has been blessed with an uncommonly handsome face, an advantage Mary makes sure to fortify with a formal education in France. There, George learns not just how to dance a jig or fence in a duel, but to participate in the queer lifestyle that flourishes among the upper classes behind (barely) closed doors. When he returns, his mother — a self-made woman who willed herself into the lower rungs of the landed gentry through a loveless, abusive marriage that’s left her a penniless widow — is happy to suggest a strategic outlet for George’s desires.
Naturally, Moore is formidable, acing an English accent and exhibiting an adroit sense of comic timing. (When leaving the room after making a drunken scene, Mary is asked where she’s going. “To strategically vomit,” she declares.) But it’s Galitzine who gets the more dynamic role, sandwiched into a breakout year between “Red, White & Royal Blue” and the upcoming “The Idea of You.” Both of those movies are more conventional romantic comedies; here, Galitzine gets a darker edge and the space to show said darkness’ development over time. George begins the show as a lovestruck boy caught up with a servant and ends it as the first Duke of Buckingham, a seasoned and cynical operator who’s transcended the part of royal side piece. Galitzine sells both incarnations with equal conviction, and all the gradations in between as George gradually adopts his mother’s ultra-pragmatic view of the world.
Mary and George may give the show its name, but it’s James who provides its erratic center, the unstable sun around whom everyone else must revolve: his wife Anne (Trine Dyrholm) and son Charles (Samuel Blenkin); pious Chief Justice Edward Coke (Adrian Rawlins) and scheming adviser Francis Bacon (Mark O’Halloran); George and his initial rival for James’ affections, the jealous Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson). To guide James and the country in their chosen direction, and to advance their own self-interest, these figures square off and consolidate in ever-shifting combinations. Mary and George initially have a sponsor in Sir David Graham (Angus Wright), an Englishman who wants to reduce the influence of Scots like Somerset; when their incentives no longer align, Mary swiftly pivots to other partners. And as George comes into his own, he’s just as much a target of aspiring puppeteers as the king, an endless game of musical chairs with no constants except an underlying nihilism.
Curran captivates as the mercurial sovereign, who veers between moments of lucidity and long stretches of what seems like madness, though it’s never identified as such. James bites into George’s arm without warning, bolts into a river during a paranoid episode and is generally prone to outbursts or locking himself in his chambers. James’ extremes set the mold for the strange, brutal-yet-genteel world of “Mary & George,” presided over by directors Oliver Hermanus, Alex Winckler and Florian Cossen with star turns from costume designer Annie Symons and production designer Helen Scott. When George arrives in France, he walks right into an active orgy; when Mary conspires to marry off her mentally incapacitated eldest son John (Tom Victor) for the dowry, she has the bride-to-be seized with an armed crew of bandits. Late in the series, James and George make love in a royal bedchamber built entirely outside, with broad swaths of rich fabric draped over trees.
Such choices heighten the atmosphere, and yet “Mary & George” also pays close attention to the actual politics of Europe circa 1615. An entire episode is dedicated to explorer Sir Walter Raleigh (Joseph Mawle) and his attempts to inflame tensions with Spain. The fictionalized Charles I may not have serenaded a Spanish princess in public to repair the relationship, but his unsuccessful attempts to arrange a match were real. As George works his way further into James’s inner circle, the more these higher-stakes issues come to dominate the plot over interpersonal squabbles. The effect is to remind us that these characters’ attempts to secure their own personal fortunes come with real consequences, often for lower-class figures like Mary’s aide and lover Sandie (Niamh Algar), an Irish ex-prostitute.
This perspective, maintained throughout and reinforced by its final scene, gives “Mary & George” a tragic air even at its most deliciously bawdy. The show’s queer themes are refreshingly matter-of-fact; Moore seems less interested in centering such relationships for their own sake than using them as a magnifier for the transactional world in which they take place. “I have lived a sane, tame life waiting for change,” Mary says. “But it does not come unless you grab opportunity by the hand and never let go.” Some opportunities are more pleasurable than others.
“Mary & George” premieres on Starz on April 5 at 9 p.m. ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Fridays.
