Original language(s) English | Country of origin United Kingdom | |
Starring Clémence PoésyKevin McKiddRobert CarlyleTim McInnernyEmilia FoxMichael Fassbender | ||
Gunpowder, Treason & Plot is a 2004 BBC miniseries loosely based upon the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James VI of Scotland. 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 VI 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.