For those of us who have gazed at our children and thought, “Miraculous fruit of my loins, blood of my blood, bone of my bone – how can I best monetise you?” Ladies, we have our answer. Mary Villiers, played with gorgeous relish by Julianne Moore, is here to show us the way.
Mary & George is the tale of the former – born into 17th-century social nothingness – who uses the latter, her preternaturally handsome second son (played beautifully in all senses by Nicholas Galitzine), to secure the family fortunes in the most gloriously audacious manner. Based on The King’s Assassin, Benjamin Woolley’s nonfiction account of a family that makes the Borgias look like the Waltons, and written by DC Moore (Temple, Killing Eve), it is more fun than I can possibly tell you. It has the narrative rigour of The Favourite, the disciplined panache of The Great, just a dash of The Tudors’ excess and enough sex to keep Bridgerton fans happy too. This is a great combination.
We first meet George when he has hung himself in the forest. His mother – currently the Countess of Buckingham but it’s early days – strides through the trees, rolling her eyes and wearily cuts him down. “Good morning, George.” He has, it seems, staged the whole thing because she wants him to go to France to be – well, let’s say educated in courtly manners and matters of all kinds – while he wants to stay on the family estate and bang the servant girl. This, says Mary, won’t do them any favours. Daddy is dead (George doesn’t know but he fell down the stairs while trying to beat the living daylights out of Mary and she didn’t call for help until she was sure he was beyond it), the first son John is a liability (possibly due to daddy’s syphilitic legacy) and it is up to George to secure everyone’s future.
The best way to do this, Mary has determined, is – once he is fully Frenched up – to become the lover of King James I of England/James VI of Scotland (Tony Curran). To pay for George’s passage and education, she needs money. What is the minimum time before she can get hitched again, she asks her solicitor. Four weeks, he says. Six, ideally. She is there in two, marching up the aisle with the decently wealthy Sir Thomas Compton (Sean Gilder). She cultivates his royal connections while George … broadens his horizons.
Once George is home, she sets to work throwing him – sometimes almost literally – into the path of the king and his penis at every opportunity. George and the king’s longtime favourite, young Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, are soon sworn enemies but Somerset is on the skids and knows it.
There is more – much more. There is a plot to marry the feeble-minded John (a lovely, heartbreaking turn by Tom Victor) to the daughter of Sir Edward Coke (Adrian Rawlins), who is quite keen on the idea, and of Lady Hatton (Nicola Walker), who is having none of it. “I would rather strangle her dead,” she tells Mary in front of the assembled dinner party when the proposal is mooted. Game recognises game.
There are orgies, there are poisonings-by-prune, Sir Francis Bacon (Mark O’Halloran) offering to guide George better than Mama, alliances, betrayals, attempted and actual murders. There is a lesbian affair between Mary and a brothel keeper (Niamh Algar), who recognises in her a fellow “half-soul, worn down by mistress-time” and people on the hunt for proof of Mary’s lowly origins and a chance to bring her down.
The stakes increase with every episode as the family climbs higher up the rungs of the social and court ladder and the whole thing remains tremendous. Propulsive but grounded. Plotty but never messy. Exuberant and sumptuous without becoming bananas (The Tudors, I love you, but come on). And that rarest treat: bitingly witty, just when it needs to be. Moore is brilliant – cold, clever and always scintillating – and seems to be having the time of her life. I hope so. Her scenes with Walker, in particular, are an absolute joy. Everyone is wonderful, including the relative newcomer Galitzine who manages to make real a character no one at all in his world cares about beyond his looks. Including and especially his magnificent, monstrous mother, for whom you root all the way.
• Mary & George is on Sky Atlantic and Now. In the US, it will be on Starz from 5 April.
