Mary & George

Julianne Moore is wickedly delicious as Mary Villiers, a somewhat noble mother of four who had her sights set on rising above the ranks of nobility with the help of her son, George (cheeky performance from Nicholas Galitzine, who at last sinks his teeth into a real role).

Together, mother and son plot and weave their way through the depraved King Charles' court (Tony Curran effective as the king). What unveils before ones very eyes will fascinate those who seek not to judge, but watch in a perverse sense of wonderment how this all took place in the 17th century.

Creator and writer, D. C. Moore, has crafted a telling tale of what could have occurred behind the King's golden secret doors, delivering treachery of the highest order and other wild shenanigans one has to endure in order to climb that royal social ladder.

👑 Ignore ALL those reviewers that claim this 7 hour miniseries isn't excellent.. Because it most definitely IS. Those viewers are just "morality-entertainment police" who allow their moral judgment to paint their views on superb cinematic art. They obviously HATE the Fact that this historical miniseries is based on the King James who we know as the man behind the King James Version of the Bible that most modern Christians use as their most prized edition. Given that King James was historically a well known extreme homosexual who surrounded himself with handsome younger men to fulfill his sexual needs daily. This theatrical quality level 7 hour film shows what we already know, that royalty over the centuries is filled with Betrayal, Corruption, Cruelty, Murder, Ambition, Sex, Manipulations, and Lust For Power at Any Cost. But, what this movie has to offer is Superb Performances by a very professional cast led by Julianne Moore in a very juicy diabolical lead role. Also, a very enigmatic performance by Nicholas Galitzine as her son who is a pawn in his mother's chess game for power and wealth. The production is very detailed and wonderfully written. Locations, Sets, Costumes are historically accurate. You can't go wrong with this handsome production and its not an accident that it's been critically acclaimed around the world at every Film Festival it played in. Don't Miss It (and forget about those morality police)

This tale of England and Scotland's homosexual king James I and his favourite and lover, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, might look the part but there are too many aspects to it which can only deserve the well-known observation 'nice try, but no cigar'.

This series is like those tomatoes we are offered these days in the vegetable section of too many superstores: they look the part and are certainly pretty, but all too often they taste of very little but water, and mot certainly not of tomatoes.

That analogy is not as silly as it sounds: shop for tomatoes in a Southern European small-town market and you will be offered horribly misshapen specimens, but by God they taste great and do taste of tomato.

We spoiled shoppers, however, are put off aesthetically by such misshapen fruit and lazily settle for tasteless specimens which, however, look fantastic.

That pretty much sums up Mary & George: with its authentic looking sets (filmed in various Jacobean manor houses in England), sumptuous costumes and its cod-Shakespearean dialogue, many might feel Mary & George is the real deal.

But it is nothing of the kind: essentially it is bog-standard soap opera drama portentously puffed up to seem profound, whereas for too many reasons it is nothing but an expensively produced soap opera with pretensions it never lives up to.

The first, and perhaps most important, point to make is that it is fiction. This is not history. Other reviewers have warned that many watching this will imagine it is 'history' and I shall repeat that warning: this is pure fiction involving real historical characters.

Yes, James I was homosexual, and although he fathered eight children by his wife Anne of Denmark (of whom four died in infancy and his eldest son and heir died at 18) and thus might be classed as bisexual, he and Anne lived separate lives and his main inclination was gay.

He was quite open about his sexuality and did not stint himself in public with his gay courtiers. Modern apologists, in a curious form of homophobia, like to argue along the lines that 'we don't understand the kind of male friendships in the 16th and 17th centuries' and that his kind of behaviour was not necessarily gay.

Yes, it was, and James was often the butt of ribald jokes and ballads by what are often condescendingly called 'the lower orders', but he didn't care one jot.

However, the kind of rampant sexual behaviour depicted in Mary & George is fictional: James was very conscious of his 'royal status' - he 'was the king' and people had better believe it - and he would not have jeopardised his role in such a blatant public way.

It is also very probable that George Villiers was mainly gay, and he and James were known to have been very close, with a discrete passageway connecting his rooms to Villiers'. But the arrangement and goings-on set out in the TV series are occasionally ludicrous.

The novel upon which the series is based suggests that Villiers mother Mary patiently schemed to get her son, metaphorically, into James's bed. That scheming is demonstrated in the series, but all the machinations we are asked to believe are never convincing.

The evolution of George from something of a wimp into one of if not the most powerful man in England for a while is portrayed in such a cack-handed fashion that we can't quite bring ourselves to believe it (and thus as drama the piece falls at the first hurdle).

Other aspects of the series are also fatally flawed: we are presented with characters who speak, both in content and manner, in a pseudo-Jacobean fashion, but the writers also have them incessantly effing and blinding and using the C word like dockworkers. And it is incessant and even Mary does it.

It's as though the producers wanted 'an historical piece', but also wanted 'to make it modern'. That's about the only explanation I can give. It ends up being simply silly.

OK, this is fiction, but Francis Bacon would certainly not had wandered around the streets of London (though the same street is put to work several times as it happens) alone as he is shown to do.

Mary might well have had a lesbian relationship - why not, many women do. But it is a cliche too far to have her striking up such a relationship with a woman who was either a brothel madam or even just a simple prostitute. Mary was far too conscious of her status and she would not have ventured into a brothel on her own in the first place.

The vicissitudes of her rise to power are also so convoluted as at times to be more than a little incomprehensible. And would she really have, after being a scorned woman, so miraculously become such a power at court? Don't think so.

As for her supposed gay relationship (which is somewhat gratuitous as it serves no dramatic function at all), it is doubly unlikely in that in the Jacobean era and for the next two hundred years at least the class distinctions were not only vast but important to those at the top. There was no mingling 'with the plebs' by 'nobility'.

If a gay noble wanted a quick spot of how's our father, there were plenty of other gay nobles or palace staff to have it on with without trawling the streets. And it would not have taken place in one of the palace corridors.

It occurs to me that in the muddled thinking of the producers, what with rather a lot of flash-forwards and flash-backs and folk suddenly appearing, Mary & George was perhaps intended as some kind of 'art piece'. Well, it that was the case they get nul points.

At the end of the day one might argue that my gripes are irrelevant because, after all, this is 'only fiction'. To that I would respond 'fine, but overall what with this flaw and that anachronism - the constant use of the F and C words - it is rather badly made fiction.

It might look the part, but it does not convince.

The first two episodes I loved. Cutting dialogue, smart humour, silly sexiness... it reminded me of why I used to love shows on Starz like Spartacus.

Escapism, basically.

The production values are top notch, through location shooting and costuming it felt realistic. But measured by that humour that I mentioned, I know not to take it too seriously as a documentary. Just go along for the ride.

In terms of casting I want to particularly note Julianne Moore is amazing and Nicola Walker as Lady Hatton proves she is one of our top talents.

But the weird thing is... it got boring, and serious. It did a bait and switch. It started off as a dark comedy then turned into a rather sober and serious take on history.

Julianne Moore - the initial anchor, so funny - just becomes an extra almost in the later episodes. And they create a plot for her that feels a step too far even within the silliness of the plot.

And the show stumbles on them goes out on a daf whimper.

I think the hardest thing for me is the change in tone. Witty dialogue/humour of the first few episodes gives way to melodrama. It's like they started with one show, and changed their minds halfway through. For a show of only six episodes is jarring. This isn't a show that has seasons to build motivations and change characters.

It's not a terrible show by any means. And as I said production value wise it's very good. It's just a shame it couldn't make out what it is in such a short span of episodes.

I enjoyed episode 1 and from then on it went rapidly downhill until we eventually abandoned it at episode 3.

The sound on the dialogue was quite hard to make out without subtitles as it was very badly mixed. After straining to hear and then attempt to grasp what the convoluted plot was actually about it wasn't actually worth the effort.

Just another one of these tedious series which descend into a garbled mess after a promising start.

Who is actually approving the script? The costumes and the sets were fantastic so once again it's the writing that insults the viewers intelligence.

A wasted opportunity!