The problem isn't the history that the filmmakers leave in, but how much they leave out. Director Dibb can't whip up the democratic ferment of the Whig party, and particularly Grey's wing of it; the duchess' prowess as a campaigner is illustrated rather than dramatized. Whig firebrand Charles Fox as her political mentor and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan as the friend who satirized (and immortalized) her marriage in The School for Scandal fly in and out of the action as if their only purpose is to establish her political and cultural stature, not her wit and skill at private and public manipulation.
What's amazing about Georgianna's life isn't all the heartbreak, but how much merriment and vitality she packed away in spite of it. The Duchess covers too little ground. It lacks the driving fervor that gave rise to the real duchess' drunkenness and gambling, her affairs, her mastery of the salon and the ballroom, her intense male and female friendships, and, yes, her towering hairdos.
