Critic Reviews

The stakes increase with every episode as the family climbs higher up the rungs of the social and court ladder and the whole thing remains tremendous. Propulsive but grounded. Plotty but never messy. Exuberant and sumptuous without becoming bananas (The Tudors, I love you, but come on). And that rarest treat: bitingly witty, just when it needs to be.

Mary & George is what happens when a show is firing on all cylinders, as it features a bevy of talented performers with great chemistry delivering fantastically written material. Not only that, but it’s delivered in a beautifully crafted package with remarkable aesthetics and an equally extraordinary soundtrack to boot. This show — like King James I — rules hard.

Too often TV critics (this one included) must bemoan a series for not living up to either its premise or the sum of its parts. Mary & George emphatically – uproariously – does both.

Mary & George takes bold swings, with regard to its approach to the period’s details and to its depiction of history. These swings are wild enough that it could off-put purists of the genre, but I was delighted. Mary & George is the type of show pushing the period drama genre where it needs to go in the future: to a vision of the past that shows us how similar it really was to our present.

The king alone seems to hope he’s living in a fairy tale, or a star-crossed romance, or a grand historical epic. The fun of Mary & George is that it recognizes all along that he’s just been a pawn in a particularly vicious soap.

Darkly comic and lushly erotic, both boldly anachronistic and surprisingly true to history, “Mary & George” takes the better part of its duration for the viewer to internalize its offbeat, unpredictable rhythms. By then, what could be a standard story about the overlap of sex and ambition has wormed its way deep under our skin.

“Mary & George” strikes a desirable balance, delivering a little of the unexpected and uncouth in welcome spots, especially where the randy bits are concerned.

Mary & George aspires to be more than standard sexed-up period fare, and most of the time it gets there.

Since the 2018 film The Favourite, followed by TV’s The Great, a contemporary energy has entered the genre — one charged with a ton of colourful swearing, moments of off-centre humour and romping a go-go, the more sexually fluid the better. Mary & George has all this in abundance. A touch affected, maybe, but certainly fun.

Even if it might be tricky to remember when George fell ill with the pox or any individual scene of the young man sleeping his way to the top of the ladder, there’s still enough to consider continuing the journey into the remainder of the season; it’s a testament to all involved and their ability to make a compelling watch out of something centuries in the past draped with a peculiar contemporary feel. It’s imperfect, and yet somehow works.