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Gunpowder, Treason and Plot is a Box TV production for BBC Northern Ireland directed by Gillies MacKinnon, whose credits include such films as Pure, Regeneration, Hideous Kinky and Small Faces. He also directed Jimmy McGovern's 1990 BBC TWO drama Needle.
Filmed entirely on location in Romania with key Scottish crew, McGovern's script concentrates on Mary's short-lived reign and the battles she has to fight with both her Protestant subjects and the English Queen, Elizabeth 1st (Catherine McCormack).
The story continues with her son James VI of Scotland (who, on Elizabeth's death, became James I of England), and the plot against his reign masterminded by the influential Catholic Robert Catesby (Coyle) - a plot planned by Guy Fawkes, (played by newcomer Michael Fassbender), to blow up the Houses of Parliament in order to rid the nation of an oppressive Protestant monarch.
The drama reunites McGovern with producer Gub Neal. The pair created Cracker together and were also responsible for the award-winning drama-documentary, Hillsborough.
A comprehensive Press Pack is available on the BBC website.
BBC Video clip - Mary Queen of Scots (Clémence Poésy) and Lord Darnley (Paul Nicholls) begin their courtship while Bothwell (Kevin McKidd) looks on with increasing jealousy
Blackadder star Tim McInnerney, Edward Fox's daughter Emilia and This Life's leading light Daniela Nardini have joined the cast of a new epic for the BBC about Mary Queen of Scots and her son James 1 being made by the co-creators of Cracker.
McInnerney, who played buffoon Lord Percy in Blackadder, will play the hunch-backed Cecil, Elizabeth I's chief minister who devised an intricate spy network and who was instrumental in persuading Elizabeth to behead her cousin, Mary, in 1587.
Fox, who starred in last year's BBC2 hit Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, will play Cecil's spy, Lady Margaret, who helped frame Mary for a plot to kill Elizabeth.
And Nardini, who shot to fame in This Life, the seminal 90s series about cocaine snorting, bed-hopping lawyers, takes on the role of Lady Huntly, a favourite of Queen Mary.
The drama, which has been two years in the making, has just started production in Romania and will headed by Robert Carlyle, who plays James I, and 20-year-old French unknown, Clemence Poesy, who has landed the role of Mary.
Written by the Hillsborough scriptwriter, Jimmy McGovern, the £5m Gunpowder, Treason and Plot is one of the BBC's most ambitious period dramas in the last five years and will reunite the Liverpudlian writer with his Cracker co-creator, Gub Neal.
The drama is an amalgamation of two separate proposals within the BBC - BBC Films originally had the idea to dramatise Mary's life on the Scottish throne and her clashes with her cousin.
But at the same time the head of BBC northern Ireland, Robert Cooper, was in talks with Mr McGovern, who had long harboured ambitions to dramatise the life of James I and his battle to beat the Catholic conspiracy to oust him, marked by Guy Fawkes' "gunpowder plot" to blow up parliament in 1605.
Already, however, there are hints the drama will involve some historic revisionism.
"It's a personal vision, a dramatic interpretation of history," said Mr Cooper.
"In Gunpowder, he [McGovern] explores the nature of power and kingship with a drama inspired by historical characters and events, in much the same way as Shakespeare interpreted the past in the history plays."
Mr Neal, who quit his post as Channel 4's head of drama three years ago to set up independent Box TV, is currently producing the series in Romania.
He said he was forced to go the former Eastern bloc for economic reasons and chose Romania because he already knew how cheap it was after an experience making a version of Sherlock Holmes for American TV.
"We discovered we could build an exterior set of Baker Street for £150,000, which at Pinewood in England would have cost us over £1m," he said.
"It all comes down to money," Mr Neal said in the first of a series of exclusive production diaries written for MediaGuardian.co.uk.
"As everyone knows, period dramas are bloody expensive - and this one is bloody and expensive. Costumes, hair pieces, cod pieces - and that's before you even get to the battles, the castles and the horses. The fact is Romania is cheap. Very cheap."
Back in England last week to finalise the cast, Mr Neal said the hardest role to fill was that of Elizabeth, who will be played by Braveheart star Catherine McCormack.
"It was the toughest role of all. We wanted a different face but the BBC was nervous - their argument being that the most famous queen demands a famous actress. Fortunately the BBC agreed with our choice."
SEX OUEEN OF SCOTS - French newcomer Clemence sizzles as monarch Mary
PLAYING history's sexiest queen was no problem for French newcomer Clemence Poesy. In fact, the actress says she relished the chance to peel off her corset and get passionate with Scots co-star Kevin McKidd.
Clemence, 21, reveals she was told to 'go for it' in the sex scenes she performed as Mary Queen of Scots for BBC mini-series Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.
And she says Kevin portraying her lover, the Earl of Bothwell was easy to work with.
'These are the great scenes to play, the ones you hope for,' she says frankly.
Mary turns to Bothwell after she is let down in bedby Lord Darnley, played by ex-EastEnder Paul Nicholls, and their affair verges on violence.
When it came to Mary's relationship with Bothwell, Clemence found a close ally in co-star Kevin.
She says: 'In the second part of the story, a film about King James, all the sex scenes are quite dark. So when it came to the scene in bed with Mary and Bothwell, the director said he really wanted us to go for it. I think it is the only sex scene across the two movies between people who really love one another.
'I had a really great time working with Kevin and everything seemed quite natural and easy.
'We had talked about that relationship a lot before starting shooting, it was a tricky thing and it was the key point of the whole story, so we had to be clear about it.
'I understand Mary and Bothwell's relationship was completely different in real life. But the easiest thing for me was just to follow Jimmy McGovern's script and not to worry about the historical version.'
Robert Carlyle dominates the second half of this epic as Mary's son King James VI of Scotland, James I of England the target of Guy Fawkes' infamous Gunpowder Plot.
But Clemence is the sensation of part one, starting on Sunday, March 14, with the story of the tragic monarch's doomed marriage, love affairs and murder plots.
Director Gillies MacKinnon who made the Kate Winslet film, Hideous Kinky insisted on a French actress for the role because Mary was herself raised in Paris and knew little of the Scots culture or language when she came to the throne.
As a teenager, Clemence spent time in Canada to improve her English. Her father is a French theatre actor.
IN Clemence,MacKinnon has found a star of the future, an actress who, while still officially at drama school, has already co-starred in a film with French legend Carole Bouquet,who starred opposite Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only.
Clemence is a pale-skinned, blue-eyed beauty who lights up the screen as Mary, a woman whose sexual desire is so great it costs her the crown.
For as period pieces go this mini-series, written by Cracker creator McGovern, is a fiery bodice-ripper.
First Mary seduces Lord Darnley. Disappointed, she turns to the Earl of Bothwell.
The relationship leads to civil war and Mary's imprisonment, by England's Queen Elizabeth I.
Years later, Elizabeth orders Mary's execution. But it is the turbulent, sexually charged scenes of Mary's early reign this drama concentrates on.
'When it comes to those difficult bed scenes it is never easy to bring those emotions to the surface,' Clemence admits.
'But you are looking forward to it as an actor, you can throw yourself into it and let it go.
'Mary certainly finds Darnley repulsive. And the scene of them making love is very awkward and unpleasant. But Paul is not as bad as Darnley in real life, so it was fun shooting it with him.'
She also admits to taking home a memento of her wedding night with Nicholls Mary's glamorous bridal dress. Clemence purrs: 'It is such a beautiful dress, I had to have it.
'Overall, the corsets were uncomfortable, I'd much rather wear jeans. But they did make you feel very feminine. I got used to them.'
Most historians believe Mary brought abouther own downfall by acting irresponsibly. And Clemence admits Mary is deeply flawed.
But this is where the Frenchwoman thinks the young Scots queen proves herself to be human.
'She can't fight against her emotions when it comes to her husband and Bothwell. She is calculating up to a point and then she is just a woman who is in love with someone,' she says.
'This is her flaw and, because of it, she loses everything.'
Debate has raged for centuries over whether or not Mary had a hand in the murder of her husband. Darnley was at the time third in line to the English throne, a major factor in Mary's decision to marry himand have his son.
But it soured fast and rumours persisted of affairs behind his back. In real life, Darnley was a drunk womaniser and was thought to almost certainly have syphilis, which was rife at the time and could prove fatal. Mary looked instead to her lieutenant.
In truth, historians doubt Bothwell was much better as an individual. In one version of events, he raped Mary and kidnapped her before she agreed to marry him.
In McGovern's version, Bothwell is a much more straightforward hero, but he is still No1 suspect in Darnley's death.
Clemence argues: 'She despises Darnley because, in the script, he threatens her baby son. It's why she allows Bothwell to kill him.
'Bothwell is the kind of guy who will always tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it. That is why they fight all the time.
'He is basically telling her how to behave and he's right, she's wrong. She knows he will protect and help her and it draws her passion.'
Clemence knew little of the monarch before landing the role in a Paris audition, and says Mary fascinates her.
'I knew she had a great tragic end, but I had no idea she grew up in France,' she says.
'Now I've read about her, she's a striking character. She had to fight so much for recognition, you know, to be recognised as a woman, as a queen, and not a little French girl.
'I love the evolution in this movie, her going from this French court girl, used to being talked to by poets and to dancing and flirting, and then going to Scotland and realising this is not the way it is going to be anymore.'
So, has the role ignited her interest in Scottish men? She laughs: 'I am involved with someone in Paris. But Scotsmen are not so different.
'The really sad thing is I've never even visited Scotland and here I am playing Mary. I would really like to go to Edinburgh for the festival some time, I've heard so much about it.'
The BBC made the Gunpowder films in Romania to save money, reducing the budget from around £12million to £4.5million.
Part of Edinburgh's Royal Mile is recreated, and woodland outside Bucharest doubles as the Scottish Highlands.
'It seems strange to be doing this story in Romania,' Clemence admits.
'But there are a lot of Scots in the cast and crew. I've been listening to them and their stories about home.
'I went out for a drink with some of them the first night and I realised how little I knew about Scotland as a country.
'But Mary was in exactly the same position when she became queen, so I really held on to that feeling I had then.'
In recent years, Jimmy McGovern, creator of one of British television's most fantastic fictional creatures, Cracker's Fitz Fitzgerald, has concentrated on historical drama. At least, he has if your definition of historical drama stretches far enough to include events as recent as 1972, 1989 and 1995, the years in which his Bloody Sunday story, Sunday, his recreation of the Hillsborough disaster, Hillsborough, and his dramatisation of the experiences of the striking Liverpool dockers, Dockers (McGovern, it seems clear, is not a man to waste time messing around with his titles) were respectively set.
His new, two-part film, however, sees him go the whole costumed hog, and leap back four centuries to the frilly, fateful lives of Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI of Scotland, the monarch who, give or take the odd executed Catholic, united the kingdoms of Scotland and England - countries, incidentally, both played by Romania in this adaptation from, er, BBC Northern Ireland.
His Gunpowder, Treason And Plot continues the recent, enthusiastic tradition of blood, filth and sex exemplified by Ray Winstone's turn as 'Enry VIII and that BBC treatment of Charles II's reign which, if I remember correctly, starred Dick Dastardly. All are admirably keen to avoid what have become accepted as the clichés of period drama - the kind of restrained, refined approach which took for granted that audiences might know enough about being human to pick up on and understand repressed emotions and lusts - and instead jump into the mud, muss-up the bed linen, and generally get their hands dirty. Thing is, they tend to be in such a hurry to do so that they can't avoid blundering straight into other clichés. You can, for instance, tell who the villains in Gunpowder … are because, by and large, they tend to be the ones rolling their eyes and billowing evil laughter through their evil beards.
McGovern's script has what could be termed an open relationship with history. On the one hand, he seems bogged down in the faithful, i-dotting, t-crossing business of spelling out who everyone is, what they're doing and why, leading to far too many scenes such as the early one in the French court in which, upon receiving news of her mother's death, young Mary responds by saying: 'I wanna return home. For I am now Mary Queen of Scots.'
On the other hand, once he's done duty by historical fact - stating the who, what, where, when and hows - McGovern feels no qualms about having a fast and loose fling with the whys. So, yes, Mary's dandyish husband, Lord Darnley, is murdered as the record states; but in addition, we learn he was offed because she was hot-to-trot with dour hunk Lord Bothwell, a piece of post-rationalisation scholars might find difficult to swallow. Though not quite so difficult as next week's jaw-dropping exercise in speculative motivation, when it is revealed that James I agreed to tolerate Catholicism on condition Thomas Percy gave him a blow-job.
Suspended midway between the rigour of Simon Schama and the intrigue of Footballers' Wives, the cast has to work hard to put it across, but, evil beards aside, McGovern and director Gillies MacKinnon are blessed by actors of strength and ability. Tonight's episodes are held together almost entirely by the emotional veracity of Clémence Poésy and Kevin McKidd (a compelling central couple as Mary and Bothwell), have found in the parts. Catherine McCormack has drawn the short straw as Elizabeth I, whose role consists solely of responding to bad news. Next week, it becomes the Robert Carlyle Show, when, giving life to McGovern's conception of James I as a violently paranoid bisexual maniac, he does a lot of scowling, stomping, shouting and looking mad - three things Carlyle does very well, but by no means the only three things he does very well, though you'd hardly guess it from this.
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This Page created: 11 August, 2004
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