There’s Something About Mary & George
by Pete Langman
March 2024
Pete Langman raises an eyebrow at Sky’s sexy TV ‘history’ antics.
To begin with, a confession. I am a historian—and, for better or worse, Sky Atlantic’s new historico-dramatic miniseries, Mary & George, falls slap-bang into my period.
Upping the stakes, my partner is also a historian—and her primary expertise focuses on a character closely involved in the events depicted, namely the alleged affair between King James VI/I and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Despite which, Elizabeth Stuart—James I’s daughter, Charles I’s sister, and the woman at the epicentre of the Thirty Years’ War, which burned Europe from 1618 to 1648—doesn’t even warrant a mention.
So, forgive me if, in what follows, you think you hear the sound, far off, of two middle-aged historians repeatedly bellowing ‘NO!?!’ at their TV screen.
Mary and George had been hotly anticipated amongst those of us whose predilection is for a good bit of Stuart history, especially over the (let’s face it) rather worn-out and relentlessly-hyped Tudors. Enough already: they’ve had their go. Let’s hear it for the Jacobeans! This, we hoped, would be the drama that could finally kick-start an interest in the seventeenth century, the century that has everything: science, revolution, real-life Game of Thrones, you name it.
We knew that the hot goss was going to be the ‘did they/didn’t they’? nature of James and Villiers’ relationship. Was the king (whisper it) gay? Historically, the evidence is sparse, to say the least; but when a king starts calling a famously-beautiful young Gentleman of the Bedchamber his ‘dog’, ‘darling’, or ‘wife’, you do have to wonder. And when said king and his son both refer to the same beauteous youth as ‘steenie’ (after St Stephen, reputed to have the face of an angel), and indulge his every whim, well ... let’s just say no one was surprised to see sex take centre stage.
Sure, no king would ever behave like that at court. And obviously ‘Gentleman of the Bedchamber’ is really only what it says it is. But that’s ok. We’re not complete killjoys, you know. Mary & George sets off at a rollicking pace, and so what if it’s a-girt with ahistorical and far-fetched scenes: it’s damn sexy and great fun. Julianne Moore is electric as a mother on the make, even if her line “If I looked like you [George] I’d rule the fucking planet” might have many thinking that perhaps ‘George’ was miscast (Nicholas Galitzine may be handsome, but he has neither beauty nor the legs with which the real George was credited. Perhaps that’s why the costumiers didn’t see fit to reproduce even one of Villiers’ many staggering portraits). Mary’s tussles with Lady(-in-waiting) Hatton are also priceless, laying waste to all that ‘women had no agency back then’ nonsense. Tony Curran’s James ignores the easy clichés that have been attached to the Scottish king over the years, and there are a host of viscerally rude and greasy supporting characters. Great drama. Great fun. And a great pity the show failed to keep pace with itself.
“Those who know their history will find it makes no sense; and those who don’t will not be able to make any sense of it.”
Don’t believe the trailers claiming ‘the historical accuracy is incredible’, because it ain’t. But the problems with Mary and George are not so much the egregious errors it included—the vain Lord Chancellor, Baron Verulam introducing himself as a mere ‘Sir Francis’? The syphilitic Bacon/Verulam wasting away in a windswept hovel, sporting Johnny Depp’s fake nose from The Libertine? Total nonsense—but the massive dramatic opportunities it missed.
Poison is one of the underlying themes, both as venomous whisperings and the real thing, first in brothel prunes and then a prison pie. The prune episode may have been slightly embroidered, but the intriguing poet Thomas Overbury almost certainly did die from poison (albeit over a period of time), with the coup de grace allegedly administered via an enema. Mary and George has no end of arse in it—so why baulk at the fatal lavage? Instead, we get a Cluedo-esque ‘Man Dead in Cell with a Half-Eaten Pie’ scenario. You’d think someone might have found that just a tad suspicious. Would it really take a couple of years, a scrawled (and spurious) confession, and suspicions of witchcraft to instigate a trial?
One of the rumours addressed by the programme’s source material was that Villiers precipitated the King’s own death, also by poisoning. Is this true? Almost certainly not—but that’s not the point. Since this was in question (and for those in the know was how we expected James to make his exit from the show), why oh why did the series not allude to the rumours of poisoning that had surrounded the death of court darling Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1612—rumours that centred around James himself?
‘Who can hear Mary’s warning about the plight of second sons —“raise yourself, or you will be nothing” —without thinking of a certain red-headed royal?’ writes Emine Sander in her Guardian review. She obviously hasn’t heard that Charles I was the second son (No.3 if you count Elizabeth, who was arguably a darn sight more kingly than her little brother, a view shared by a fair few in the 1620s). The phrase ‘heir and a spare’ didn’t drop out of the aether in the 1980s.
These confused takes are inevitably galling. But the real problem with Mary & George is that it gets itself so flustered after its outrageous start that it doesn’t know what to do next (whole scenes conclude without even the most cursory full-frontal nudity, as if the show forgot its entire selling point). This isn’t a question of ‘historical accuracy’, per se, because it’s TV drama. We know it isn’t real (as Sir Ridley Scott so sagely remarked, not one historian was there, so what do we know?). And we can put up with all that so long as it makes sense internally, and doesn’t just become a game of costume-drama bingo.
Leading lady not extreme enough? Introduce a ludicrous lesbian affair. Execs don’t recognise any of these names now all the bloody Tudors are dead? Bring in Sir Walter Raleigh, and then… oh wait, he isn’t really relevant… we’ll have him executed and blame the Spanish. Suitably Brexity. (To be fair, this did actually happen, but in plot terms all Raleigh’s cameo allowed was another neat one-liner from the endearingly-obscene scriptwriter: “Raleigh has a big mouth.” “And you fell right in.”)
The upshot of all this pissing about is that, by the final episode, there was so much that needed to get done that none of it was explained in any useful way. George and Charles—finally granted more than a passing role in affairs!—travel to Madrid to woo the Spanish infanta? At once distressing and farcical at the time, here it’s difficult to tell quite why they bothered. (For what it’s worth, it was King James’s long-standing, ecumenical plan to keep Europe from burning in a great confessional war). How did James die? Well, not the way he goes in Mary & George. But the strange thing is how his death (and the subsequent attempts to impeach Villiers, which led to Charles dissolving Parliament) is glossed over entirely, as are the first three years of Charles I’s reign. The next thing we know, the country is apparently at war with France, and Villiers is getting perforated by a disgruntled soldier (true, though without the unlikely seductive preamble). And that’s it. Show’s over. George Villiers is dead. Nothing to see here.
When Bacon published his Instauratio magna in 1620, leading jurist Sir Edward Coke called it a book ‘a fool could not have written, and a wise man would not.’ When viewers reach the final episode of Mary & George, those who know their history will find it makes no sense; and those who don’t will not be able to make any sense of it. And that’s a major flaw for any drama, historical or otherwise.
