Missing astronauts and a sex-fuelled Brit period drama.

It’s a pretty big star-driven week.

Earlier this week I expressed my distaste for Kate Winslet’s new HBO show The Regime (which I wasn’t alone, with a few ABW readers expressing similar to me), but quite a bit better is Julianne Moore in UK drama Mary & George.

Lucy Mangan @ The Guardian:

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.

Sophie Butcher @ Empire:

This show seems to have sold itself as a bit of a sex-fest — not your mother’s period drama, full of swearing and scheming and bite. Unfortunately, the best examples of that are fairly limited to the first half of the series. The first few episodes establish a brilliant, blackly-comedic tone, threaded through with violence and seduction, giving a modern feel to the historical aesthetic through spiky, witty dialogue, blunt editing and a pulsing, synthy score. Those flourishes (and the intimate scenes) fall away, though, as the series goes on, and the show becomes something far more conventional and one-note by the end.

There’s also a new Guy Ritchie show on Netflix, based on his movie of the same name. The Gentleman stars emerging star Theo James (The White Lotus) and is, well, it’s fine. It did make me miss the fresh and vibrant Guy Ritchie we saw earlier in his career - the modern day version is a bit too bloated and a bit too glossy.