Julianne Moore to Star as Mary Villiers In Jacobean Period Drama 'Mary & George'
Although we have been gifted with several fantastic period dramas over the past few years (Bridgerton, The Spanish Princess, Becoming Elizabeth, Sanditon, Belgravia) for some reason, most of them tend to say firmly planted in one of a handful of time periods. Tudor England is always popular, with its misogynist king, fascinating women, and intricate political intrigues. The Regency period is also a go-to setting, thanks to its shifting social and technological innovations, its empire-waisted gowns, and the fact that everyone associates it with romance and witty manners. (Thanks Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, I guess.) And then there are shows like Downton Abbey set in the Edwardian period that spotlight the years in the lead-up to the Great War.
Thankfully, period dramas are now mainstream enough that studios and filmmakers are finally beginning to branch out, albeit ever so slowly. Starz's hit drama The Serpent Queen is set in sixteenth-century France, the popular new German series The Empress takes place in nineteenth-century Vienna, and Prime Video's upcoming The English sends its British heroine to the American Wild West. But there are still some periods we almost never see dramatized---like the reign of King James I.
This has always been kind of surprising, given that it was the Jacobean era that first saw a united England and Scotland under the crown, and included everything from controversial royal scandals to a witch panic. Happily, Sky and AMC seemed determined to fix that with Mary & George, an eight-part limited series about powerful royal family favorites Mary Villiers and her son George, who would become the first Duke of Buckingham.
