Sex, lies and scandal... it’s Hugh’s best role yet
He’s watching what you’re watching!
EVERYBODY of an age remembers Rinka. For those of you who are too young, Rinka was a dog belonging to Norman Scott, a flaky male model who had a homosexual affair with Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of Britain’s Liberal Party between 1967 and 1976. When Scott threatened to expose the married Thorpe and, in the climate of the time, effectively end his career, Thorpe bizarrely hatched a plot to scare Scott off by first having Rinka killed, before a bungled hit on Scott himself.
It all led to a sensational trial in which Thorpe and his co-conspirators were acquitted, though the disgrace ended his career anyway and, frankly, everyone believed he was guilty and it was just another case of the Establishment protecting itself.
It didn’t help that Scott, the only player in the drama still alive, came across as so very needy and slightly unhinged, though if someone killed your dog and tried to have you killed too, that would be a perfectly understandable state in which to find yourself.
The entire tale now has been turned into a three-part BBC drama, and A Very British
Scandal kicked off with a delectable opening episode that triumphantly trod the very fine line between almost Feydeau farce and thinly veiled contempt for the oddly pathetic and entitled Old Etonian Thorpe.
There were moments of divine comedy, especially in Thorpe’s first successful seduction of Scott, and all of this is down to Hugh Grant playing the role of a lifetime. Now that he is too old to play the stuttering, foppish leading man in romantic comedies, Grant has found mid-life rejuvenation as a character actor of some skill. There was a hint of it when he played the caddish Daniel Cleaver in the Bridget Jones’s Diary movies, and it came to full fruition more recently in Paddington 2. Grant doesn’t just play Thorpe – he inhabits him and clearly relishes every line of the playful script by Russell T Davis of Queer As Folk and Dr Who fame.
He is ably matched by Ben Whishaw as Scott, all twitchy nervousness before setting course on revenge, including sending a very graphic letter to Thorpe’s mother, Ursula, telling her exactly what they had been up to, even under her own roof (and here, Patricia Hodge is wonderful too).
With direction by Stephen Frears, who made The Queen and Philomena, among many other hits, the entire production hits on that rare magic when everything just gels, with only the odd misstep – a cutaway shot to a dog (not the unfortunate Rinka, who arrived much later) covering its eyes as Thorpe and Scott get down to business rather over-egged what already was a delicious pudding.
There was a little over-egging going on in this week’s Super Garden too, when designer Anthony Faulkner attempted to create a garden that would be a restful space for a busy family, but also had to incorporate a trampoline, which seemed like a contradictory ambition. And so it proved. Too much of the garden was given over to planting space and, running out of time, Anthony had to abandon the plan to sink the trampoline so the bouncing surface would be at ground level.
He ended up with two distinct spaces that lacked any unity, and he was chastised for it. There are war criminals in to The Hague who have faced less terrifying judges than the three on Super Garden. Personally, I wouldn’t show them a potted plant, because they’d criticise the pot.
One thing all the Super Garden contestants have in common is that they start out fresh-faced and full of vim, until bad weather intrudes, their plans mysteriously are scaled back without consultation, the one big feature the judges loved at the planning stage is abandoned, and the impending deadline turns them into hollow husks of their early selves, visibly combusting with stress. They are not alone. In Stressed
Out, a two-part documentary presented by journalist Jennifer O’Connell, a new and very assured presence on our screens, we learned that stress is becoming an epidemic, and Jennifer spoke to experts in mindfulness about the ways programmes such as cognitive behavioural therapy can redress the work-life balance.
It was fascinating for me, because I work from home and my morning commute is roughly four metres between bed and desk: when I do have to go to Dublin, I turn the air blue shouting at people in other cars. As a short-term release valve, that’s fine, but persistent stress can be a killer, and we definitely need to work harder on making life easier for all.
Certainly, the last thing you’d like to see happen is that someone might take out their frustrations on a dog. One Rinka was enough for a lifetime.