George III of Great Britain is best known for two things: losing the American colonies and going mad. The second leads to the other reason he’s often onscreen — his decline lead to the regency of his son, the Prince of Wales. So in frock flicks about Prinny, sometimes King George shows up during the former’s early years as a disapproving dad.
Arthur Donaldson in America (1924)
Raymond Lovell in The Young Mr. Pitt (1942)
Frederick Valk in Mrs. Fitzherbert (1947)
Robert Morley in Beau Brummell (1954)
Graham Chapman in “The Golden Age of Ballooning,” Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1974)
Roger Booth in Barry Lyndon (1975)
Nigel Davenport in Prince Regent (1979)
Gertan Klauber in Blackadder the Third (1987)
Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness of King George (1994)
Mark Hadlow in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Opera,” Jack of All Trades (2000)
Tom Hollander in John Adams (2008)
Simon Farnaby & Lawry Lewin in Horrible Histories (2015-17)
Paul Rhys in TURN: Washington’s Spies (2015-17)
Edward Petherbridge in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2015)
Paul Whitehouse in “Christmas Special,” The Windsors (2016)
James Fleet in Bridgerton (2020)
Jonathan Groff in Hamilton (2020)
Corey Mylchreest & James Fleet in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023)
What version of King George III onscreen do you like best?
pssst King George’s song in Hamilton is called YOU’LL be Back!
Just checking who reads, lol!
Edward Petherbridge – his performance made my cry. Nigel Hawthorne a close second.
Tom Hollander in John Adams was great. It was almost word-for-word John Adams’ account of meeting the king. That’s damn impressive.
I also loved The Madness of King George. I don’t know why, but I went in expecting it to be a bit stuffy (though of course I was willing to be wrong). It wasn’t. It’s just a great drama.
And glad you included Hamilton haha. I will say… I joked with my friend at the time that Hamilton is -every- bit as jingoistic and reductive as The Patriot (2000) but you don’t notice because all of the dad rapping!
(Not relevant to the post, but: you slightly redesigned your website and now I feel like someone who’s cranky because they rearranged the grocery store!)
Our site got hacked last week & we had to rebuild it, so some of the old things had to go away. We’re still fixing bits.
No wonder the design was all off for a while. You have my sympathies.
Well damn, sorry that’s the reason.
Looks spiffy, though.
So that’s what happened. What is wrong with people???
I like the redesign! Keeps the site feeling fresh.
Yeah, me too 😒
I’m feeling cranky about it too! 😂
Lol, I’m SUPER cranky about having to do it at all! There’s still so many things on my “to fix / bring back” list.
Nigel Hawthorne, hands down! Fun fact: he agreed to be in Demolition Man to prove that he had screen presence to the producers of TMoKG. Unbeknownst to him, they already wanted him for the role.
I love the Prince Regent series, it is on YouTube and as the Georgian era is my favorite, I look for anything on the Georges. Many of the courtiers were more interesting, I.e wish they would do a bio series on Lord John Hervey, who served George II. He had a wife and lovers of male and female at the same time.
Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren have deeply imprinted on my brain as George III and Charlotte. I love that movie, even though the “treatments” for poor George are hard to watch. The costumes (as you all know) are exquisite
I did like very much Nicholas Rowe and Heike Makatsch as king George and queen Charlotte in “Longitude” although their appearance was very short. But most depictions of the king are very one sided. Nigel Hawthorne is excellent too. However I think that queen Charlotte was different to the queen in “The madness of king George”.