Gunpowder: Treason and Plot

2004

Director: Gillies MacKinnon

Writer: Jimmy McGovern

Producer: Gub Neal - Alan J Wands

Director of Photography: Nigel Willoughby

Costume: Nic Ede

Make-Up Designer: Penny Smith

Music: John Keane - Grigore Lese

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 I.

She conspires with the Earl of Bothwell to assassinate her miscreant husband Lord Darnley.

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 - 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.

Cast List:

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