As costume dramas go, ‘Mary & George’ fails to reach ‘Great’-ness
I thought for sure I’d gobble up “Mary & George,” a new Starz miniseries set in the early 1600s. The royal costume drama, based on Benjamin Woolley’s nonfiction book “The King’s Assassin: The Fatal Affair of George Villiers and James I,” is about the rise of a young courtier named George Villiers who becomes King James’s lover and a powerful figure himself, largely thanks to the machinations of his devious mother, Mary, played by Julianne Moore. It sounds like the kind of lush castle romp I generally enjoy. But the series, created by D.C. Moore, wore on me.
It drips with attitude, wit, and archness, which can sometimes work — see “The Great” — but fails to provide enough character and narrative to back it all up. It doesn’t build so much as tread water. Just the fact that there’s competition among young men to bed the king doesn’t a seven-episode series make. It’s fun to see a historical fiction effortlessly including same-sex relationships, of which Mary partakes as well; but the court intrigues, which Mary braves with naked ambition, don’t gather enough steam.
Moore is excellent, oozing haughty desperation and fierce but utterly non-maternal mothering. She makes it all watchable enough for me, as does Tony Curran, who is remarkable as the king, a high-living, sexually insatiable, and chaotic fellow. They bring energy and purpose to their scenes. But, as young George, Nicholas Galitzine isn’t given enough of a character — or, perhaps, doesn’t find enough of a character — to carry so much of the show. When he and the king are truly in love, it’s hard to know what qualities the king has fallen for. He’s pretty, and pretty nebulous.