Queen Mary & King George V And His Rise To Power: Review

Mary is credited with orchestrating the Duke’s rise to power – elevating her own status in the process.

Over the course of her decades-long career, Julianne Moore has played everyone from Virginia Woolf to Maude Lebowski, President Coin to Dora Maar, yet the Oscar and BAFTA winner never signed on for a courtly period drama – until Oliver Hermanus’s Mary & George came along. Due out on Sky Atlantic in the UK and AMC in the US later this year, the Living director’s seven-part series recounts the true story of Mary Villiers, mother of the notorious 1st Duke of Buckingham, who effectively ruled England in the latter years of James I’s reign.

It’s Mary who’s credited with orchestrating the Duke’s rise to power – drastically elevating her own status in the process. Born into humble circumstances in 1570, she married Sir Villiers, a member of Leicestershire’s minor landed gentry, as a teenager and gave birth to four children. It’s her second son, George, that she decided was marked for greatness – dispatching him to the French court to cultivate his political talents and then on to London to win the approval of James I on behalf of the family in 1614.

There, he more than succeeded in his quest to establish himself as a favourite of the monarch – becoming gentleman of the royal bedchamber (and James’s lover) within a year. He would remain by the besotted King’s side for the next decade, with disastrous consequences for the country. It’s George whose arrogance is credited with leading England into the Anglo-Spanish War, and whose political machinations indirectly led to the beheading of James’s son, Charles I.

Killing Eve scribe DC Moore has penned the scripts for Mary & George, inspired by Benjamin Woolley’s The King’s Assassin, with filming currently underway in the UK. A number of England’s most celebrated sites are serving as backdrops, including Kent’s Sevenoaks. As for Moore’s costars? Newcomer Nicholas Galitzine will slip into George’s breeches, while Tony Curran will lend his Scottish accent to the role of James.