Mother knows best, right? There have been many influential matriarchs all throughout history and the history of television and film, but not very many have encouraged their sons to constantly bed the King of England as much as Julianne Moore’s Mary Villiers does in Starz’s bawdy, rich, and tantalizing limited series Mary & George. This historical drama breaks all the rules when it comes to royal stories of sex and devious schemes, and Moore and Nicholas Galitzine are a dynamic, vicious mother-son pairing.
Mary is in dire straights at the start of Starz’s seven-episode series. After her abusive husband dies (buh bye), she discovers that her house no longer belongs to her, and she must re-marry quickly in order to retain her status before falling from grace. Her eldest son, John, is simple-minded, but she has more faith that her second son, the handsome, twink-y George (Galitzine), can be more successfully molded and guided for greatness. After a less than respectable mourning period, Mary secures a new man, and sends The Second Son to France where he can learn how to be a man in society. George’s tutor is the absolutely dreamy Jean, played briefly with pouty, sexual abandon by Khalil Ben Gharbia. He teaches the impressionable George about dancing, fencing, and, of course, how to not be afraid of loving to fuck other men. In the first episodes, several people clock George staring at hot guys, and its indicative of how Mary & George is unafraid to show the shades of human sexuality. “Bodies are just bodies,” Jean tells George before their first tryst–a piece of advice that he, and other characters, repeat throughout the show.
“I think we aim higher,” Mary tells her son after he returns from France, his posture and swag sturdier. In order for Mary to get noticed at court, she will use her son’s good looks, newly found confidence, and sexual eagerness to bed King James I, a straight-up dickpig whose wandering eye glints as much as the stoned rings on his fingers. James is surrounded by other horny men, but Mary is confident that her nubile son is the key to her family’s longevity. As Mary begins to rise in the ranks, George must learn how to fend off many of James’ devoted lovers, most notably, the Earl of Somerset, played with cocky ease by Laurie Davidson–Mr. Mistofelees and Will Shakespeare, if you’re nasty.
Moore is devious and sexy, but she never loses a thread of vulnerability when she has to use it at her disposal. There is always a palpable layer of sensuality at play but she calibrates it depending on which man she has move around the chessboard in her head. Her costuming–the high collars and plunging necklines–are not just there to allure but to entrap, the silhouettes may be spikey but the material might be gauzy and delicate. Moore bucks the most against Nicole Walker’s Lady Hatton and when she tries to set up her John with Hatton’s Frances, Hatton isn’t having any of it. “I’d rather strangle her dead,” Hatton spits out so casually and viciously that you begin to wonder if Mary and Hatton could own the world together if they joined forces. In moments when Mary is defeated, the glint in Moore’s eye is never snuffed–it merely shifts. Moore is triumphant, delivering one of her most robust, slithering performances, but she is never not hypnotic. She is, quite simply, a blast to watch.
Galitzine has the toughest job in the entire season, and while it’s natural to compare this to the fairytale queer romance of Prime Video’s Red, White & Royal Blue, he imbues his George with a susceptibility that he learns how to hide better, the more he bangs the King. We get more confident the more we sleep around, and that conviction grows on George like a content cat. His George could’ve been a sniveling brat who pouts at his mother’s determination, but it’s way more fun to fuck a king than it is to pretend to know what you know everything when you’re only twenty. Once he fucks his way into James’ inner circle, we begin to wonder if power and ambition are also hereditary. Does George need to save himself from his mother’s clutches? Early on, George is told, ‘The whole point of rules is knowing when to get around them or break them into pieces.’ We see George understand this notion more and more as he gets closer to power, and Galitzine is thrilling to watch.
As King James, Tony Curran basks in the decadence and frivolity that only a sex-crazed royal can satisfy. With his curtains of fiery red hair and a goatee that sometimes obscures his overeager mouth and tongue, we think this is a man who only thinks with his crotch and loins. While Curran is having a gay, olde time bedding boy after boy, he provides emotional depth in the most unexpected moments.
Starz has become quite synonymous with spinning violent, naughty royal tales, and Mary & George never sacrifices intrigue and skillfully spun webs of deception for romps in the bedroom. Don’t get it twisted, Mary & George knows how scintillating and absolutely sexy it is, but these naked frolics are used to help the climbs up the social ladder. It’s a brilliant showcase of how our minds and our loins fuel one another–an arsenic-laced, horny delight.
Mary & George debuts on Starz on April 5 with episodes dropping weekly.
