Gunpowder, Treason & Plot

Gunpowder, Treason & Plot is a 2004 BBC miniseries loosely based upon the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James I of England. The writer Jimmy McGovern tells the story behind the Gunpowder Plot in two parts, each centred on one of the monarchs.

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon and filmed in Romania with a key Scottish crew, the first film dramatizes the relationship between Mary, Queen of Scots, played by French actress Clémence Poésy, and her third husband, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell played by Kevin McKidd. Scottish actor Robert Carlyle stars as James I in the second part of the series, which concentrates on the Gunpowder Plot, planned by Guy Fawkes, to blow up the Houses of Parliament in order to rid the nation of a Protestant monarch to be replaced by a Catholic one. McGovern had previously covered the Plot in the one-hour play Traitors for BBC2's Screenplay strand, transmitted on 5 November 1990.

Cast

• Clémence Poésy as Mary, Queen of Scots
  • Iona Ruxandra Bratosin as Young Mary
• Carmen Ungureanu as Mary of Guise
• Steven Duffy as Lord James
• Kevin McKidd as Bothwell
• Tadeusz Pasternak as David Rizzio
• Maria Popistașu as Lady Marie
• Catherine McCormack as Elizabeth I of England
• Gary Lewis as John Knox
• Paul Nicholls as Lord Darnley
• Robert Carlyle as James I of England
• Sira Stampe as Anne of Denmark
• Tim McInnerny as Cecil
• Emilia Fox as Lady Margaret
• Michael Fassbender as Guy Fawkes

See also

• List of historical drama films
• BBC television drama

External links

• Gunpowder, Treason & Plot
• Gunpowder, Treason & Plot at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Fassbender