Mary & George review: Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine sizzle in Starz's historical drama

At the heart of Starz’s new limited series Mary & George is a thrilling piece of British history. Set in the Jacobean era, the show (which premieres April 5) tracks the unlikely rise of one George Villiers (eventually the 1st Duke of Buckingham) from a rebellious, wayward teenager to a cunning political operative whose close relationship with King James VI and I continues to titillate scholars. George was pushed into such a fate by his equally ambitious mother, Mary Villiers. Their relationship and tumultuous twinned history in the shadow of King James is, as depicted, a lust-driven narrative of Shakespearean proportions. This is no dry history lesson; it’s quite wet, in fact. Yet despite its provocative premise, this loose adaptation of Benjamin Woolley’s The King’s Assassin is a rather stale and stilted affair.

Desperately, though, Mary & George tries to liven up the story it’s telling. And really, it’s quite a story. This is a narrative of a young boy learning the ways of the world to better leverage his body, his looks—his lust, even—into an ambitious plan to help himself, his mother, his family, and, perhaps, his country as well. When we first meet George (Nicholas Galitzine), he’s a much too sensitive boy. He pouts and broods. He’s the kind who would rather act out and hang himself than be told what to do by his mother. Thankfully, his mother (Julianne Moore) has no time for such petty antics. She cuts off the rope and reminds him that the plan remains the same: He will go to France, where he’ll get the schooling he needs to find a way to succeed in the world.

George is the second son, usually a most useless moniker. He won’t inherit anything from his family, and his prospects are thus quite curtailed. But Mary knows there’s greatness in him, if only he’d embrace what he could do with that body, with those lips, and with that face. No matter that Mary & George is populated by plenty of boys who are infinitely hotter (or, at least, more interesting looking) than Galitzine; indeed, his hosts in France, who teach him how to fence, how to dance, and how to fuck even, are just as delectable-looking as the Internet’s latest himbo boyfriend. Then again, especially in those early episodes when George is slowly coming into his own, eventually nudged to seduce the King, whose predilection for young boys is an open secret, you watch Galitzine struggle with finding his character’s anchor. Playing unknowing insouciance is hard enough; to do so while suggesting there’s something more in one’s eyes and in one’s body is harder still. You have to buy that this young cad would, with one look, leave a man like King James dumbstruck. I never quite bought that, not when Laurie Davidson scorches up the screen whenever his Earl of Somerset comes on screen—and reminds George and audience alike why he’s the King’s preferred boy. And he is, as such, George’s greatest obstacle to climbing up the ranks and into King James’s bed, which—spoiler alert—he eventually accomplishes.

Behind it all is Mary, who’s as viciously cunning as she is ambitious. Even when she knows her firstborn is unlikely to nab her a well-off engagement and when she loses all she has, she climbs her way back up with a marriage the terms of which leave her at the mercy of George succeeding. Unlike Galitzine, who struggles with the various notes George calls him to play, Moore is truly dialed into the woman Mary was. Cruel at times and callous at others, this is a woman who understands how the world works and who is intent, then, to bend it to her will by whatever means is necessary. That means basically pimping out her son to the King, all but kidnapping a girl to marry to her first son, and even poisoning men who dare come between her and her lofty goals. That she also finds time to nurture a sly relationship with a prostitute (Niamh Algar’s Sandie) all while spouting deliciously acerbic putdowns to those in court who see through her social climbing ways is proof that Moore has been craving this kind of character.

Moore has played plenty of mothers before—but never one like this, one whose motherly instincts feel tinged with an almost barbaric sense of self-preservation. Surrounded by a cast of mostly British actors, this American-born Oscar winner more than holds her own, finding a chilling coarseness run through her portrayal of Mary Villiers.

On the other end of the spectrum is Tony Curran. The Scottish actor brings a welcome incandescent warmth to the Scottish-turned-English King. Yes, he’s clearly obsessed with the pleasures of the flesh—and of beautiful boys like George and the Earl of Somerset—but there’s also a tenderness to how Curran plays him. He’s aware of the transactional mode in which he’s constantly approached (yes, even by George) but he’s a romantic at heart, whose moods change as easily as the weather. To watch George finally seduce him, and to then find the young Villiers needing to learn what to make of such affection both in court and outside it, is arguably what Mary & George is most invested in, even as it takes quite a while for the show to arrive at such an enticing premise.

So Mary & George is not so much a story about power as it is about seduction, about the lengths the likes of the Villiers (and those who’d keep them from power) would go to ingratiate themselves with those in power, with those who have something to offer. This is perhaps why it’s so much more intriguing in its early episodes, when the tension of whether young, pretty, naive George will find a way into the King’s bed—and why it seems to run out of steam once it has to grapple with larger sociopolitical issues that feel much less interesting in comparison.

By the time the show takes us to the end of King James’s reign, Mary & George feels like it cannot reconcile the sexy, propulsive narrative it’s been wanting to tell. This is all to say there’s both too much history to cover (we end at the cusp of another war with Spain) and yet much of it is covered in its most superficial ways (everything is reduced to petty personal grievances). It makes even George’s final moments feel robbed of the narrative heft it would if it wasn’t curtailed by a quick time jump.

Ultimately, Mary & George, which is wanting to sit alongside shows like The Great, Rome, The Tudors, and the like, remains much too committed to a painterly kind of history-making. So many of its scenes look like Jacobean tableau vivants, with each character and every prop so perfectly positioned that the emotions it tries to wring out of the audience feel needlessly constrained. This is particularly true of its sex scenes, which, while seemingly steamy (lots of skin, at least), remain quite art-directed—as if created with beautiful portraiture in mind. None of it feels steeped in the muck and musk of the time. “Bodies are just bodies,” we’re told time and time again. But the bodies of Mary & George (and even those of Mary and George) are nevertheless much too pristine throughout. That alone isn’t what makes this Starz show feel more neutered than it should but it definitely keeps it from pulsing with the lust-driven flair it so obviously aspires to.

Mary & George premieres April 5 on Starz