Mary & George (Sky Atlantic/Now)
The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson (Channel 4) | channel4.com
The Gentlemen (Netflix)
Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice (BBC One) | iPlayer
I must caution delicately minded viewers of Sky Atlantic’s new seven-part breeches ripper Mary & George to have some smelling salts at the ready: it’s nothing if not spicy. Created by DC Moore (Temple, Killing Eve) and based on Benjamin Woolley’s book The King’s Assassin, it’s inspired by the real-life story of Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore, with a pristine English accent). A lowborn, steely-eyed adventuress who ascends via wealthy husbands (the first, played by Simon Russell Beale, expires within minutes), Mary turns 16th and 17th-century social climbing into a deadly art form. “If I were a man and I looked like you, I’d rule the fucking planet,” the anti-matriarch hisses at her beautiful second son, George (Nicholas Galitzine). Her scheme: to pimp him out to James I of England/James VI of Scotland (Tony Curran), who has a yen for “well-hung boys”.
At times, Mary & George is like Jacobean Grindr – a ruff sex melange of sculpted buttocks, full frontals, orgies so sumptuously lit they resemble oil paintings, and (grab those smelling salts) very full-on encounters between George and the king. Along the way, Mary romances a brothel madam (Niamh Algar), while the air is ripe with profanities, threats and insults. “A whole dark brood, the lot of you,” snarls Nicola Walker’s brilliantly sulphurous Lady Hatton, and she’s not wrong.
The story sometimes feels derivative (The Favourite, The Great) and is overstuffed with subplots. It works best as a tooth-and-claw saga of survival: mother and son’s fight to be top (royal) dog, even at the expense of each other. And what performances! Moore is a coldly magnificent viper in corsets. Galitzine brings an edge to George that curdles his physical beauty into something more interesting. Curran digs deep as the complicated king. Mary & George aspires to be more than standard sexed-up period fare, and most of the time it gets there.
The new four-part Channel 4 docuseries The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson faced a challenge: how to produce something fresh about a man who has been self-promoting, self-aggrandising and self-mythologising for decades?
Most of what you might term Wiki Boris is here, from the privileged but rocky childhood, through to Eton, Oxford, journalism and politics. Forthcoming episodes cover Brexit, the pandemic, Ukraine, Partygate, his inevitable plotting for his inevitable return… we all know the drill.
By the close of last week’s opening two episodes, Johnson has backed Brexit and become prime minister. Too bad there’s mainly the standard rogues’ gallery of talking heads (Nigel Farage, Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Matt Hancock, Sajid Javid et al). Hancock, in particular, has developed the habit of widening his eyes as if delivering an exciting new scoop while saying absolutely nothing different.
Things are livened up by tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri, whose relationship with Johnson, then London mayor, sparked questions about funding and other issues. Sprinkled across the episodes, she finds several different ways to faux-fondly label Johnson an insecure man-baby, and is still thrillingly angry about him blocking her: “What a wimp!” she roars “What a spineless coward!”
Arcuri is TV pundit gold. Otherwise, while this is a hardworking series, you end up wondering if the Johnson saga feels a little stale to stick with for another week.
Talking of bad pennies that won’t stop showing up, the half-hour BBC One Panorama documentary Trump: The Sequel? appeared in the same week the litigation-riddled former president became the presumptive Republican candidate. Navigating the likes of snowy Iowa, Justin Webb and Marianna Spring of the Americast podcast mused on sundry outcomes, such as, say, the prospect of the next US leader (erm) going to jail. Could this happen? Couldn’t anything these days?
Over on Netflix, Guy Ritchie’s eight-part TV spin-off from his 2019 film The Gentlemen has landed. Ritchie has filleted the film for some characters and basic plot (a cannabis farm operating out of a stately home). Army man and aristocrat Eddie (Theo James, last seen in The White Lotus) inherits a pile and finds himself embroiled with a drug gang led by Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario from Skins) and her incarcerated father, Bobby (Ray Winstone), who treats prison like some annexe of the Ritz, living in luxury and keeping pigeons.
Joely Richardson does her best as Eddie’s underwritten mater, while Daniel Ings, playing his brother, delivers an amusing posh screw-up. Vinnie Jones plays a kindly, zen gamekeeper, which feels wonderfully against type but keeps reminding me of The Fast Show’s Ralph and Ted.
Ritchie’s better films (such as his debut feature, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) possess humour and energy. He tries to reproduce this in The Gentlemen (slashing between scenes; scribbling information on screen), but it feels sluggish. It’s also hampered by clunky stereotyping (underworld boxing, travelling communities, fascist toffs et al) and such all-engulfing padding, it suggests Ritchie was overwhelmed by the amount of screen time he had to fill. Things are not helped either by a flat-lining, dead-eyed turn from James (presumably instructed to play it “suave and inscrutable”).
The Gentlemen does have some good moments. Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad’s Gus Fring) perks things up as a super-rich enigma. And, of course, Winstone is great. When Bobby stares wordlessly at Eddie from behind sunglasses, there’s more menace in those few seconds than anywhere else in the show.
The one-off BBC One documentary Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice marked the harrowing anniversary of the 33-year-old’s rape and murder at the hands of Metropolitan policeman Wayne Couzens in 2021. As reported by the recent Angiolini inquiry, Couzens, who committed indecent exposure and other sexual crimes, should never have been allowed to serve as a police officer.
Couzens is shown in the documentary (at one point, eerily swaying during police questioning). But the focus is on Sarah: from CCTV footage of her walk home after a friend’s dinner to her fateful apprehension by Couzens (exploiting lockdown and his police authority) to the heartfelt Clapham Common vigil, which turned tumultuous under a heavy police presence. It also looks at other widespread abuses. The clarion call of this respectful, evocative documentary is “Never (ever) again”, but you have to wonder if trust in the nation’s police force can recover.
Star ratings (out of five)
Mary & George ★★★★
The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson ★★★
Trump: The Sequel? ★★★
The Gentlemen ★★
Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice ★★★★
What else I’m watching
Navalny
(BBC Four/iPlayer)
After the recent tragic death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a remote penal colony, Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning 2022 documentary is available to stream again under the BBC’s Storyville banner. An illuminating look at one man’s tireless stand against tyranny.
Extraordinary
(Disney+)
The second series of Emma Moran’s inventive, mischievous dramedy starring Máiréad Tyers is about a world in which everyone has a superpower, whether impressive or silly.
The Push: Murder on the Cliff
(Channel 4)
An upsetting, powerful docuseries focusing on the trial of Kashif Anwar, who pushed his abused, pregnant wife, Fawziyah Javed, off Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, in 2021.
