PICK OF THE WEEK

A Very English Scandal SoHo, 8:30pm Wednesday

Listen to Hugh Grant’s voice in this show. Hear how everything he says sounds — even more so than usual — like he’s trying to keep talking while suppressing a burp? That’s good acting.

There’s a lot of good acting in A Very

English Scandal. The based-on-a-truestory miniseries about the Liberal Party MP who allegedly conspired to have his disgruntled former lover killed in order to protect his political aspirations, had Golden Globe nominations this year for both Best Actor (Grant) and Best Supporting Actor (Ben Whishaw), with the latter taking home the gong.

Grant is the MP and one-time Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe, whom we first see tucking into a deeply unappetising steak tartare, shot to look like something from the pages of a 1960s recipe book. He’s confiding in fellow Lib Peter Bessell, recalling the details of the scandal threatening to derail his career. It started back in 1961 when he met

Norman Josiffe, a young stable hand whom Whishaw portrays as a kind of naive, handsome faun straight from the Chronicles of Narnia.

Their relationship is kept secret, not least because it’s still illegal. In the background of A Very English Scandal,

Thorpe’s parliamentary colleagues are still working to pass the 1967 bill to decriminalise homosexuality in the UK. The scandal itself, however, was less to do with the relationship and more to do with what happened once it ended: the extreme measures Thorpe allegedly took to silence Josiffe, who only wanted a National Insurance card (it recorded what benefits holders were entitled to).

Written by Russell T Davies (creator of the gay TV trilogy Cucumber, Tofu and

Banana) and directed by Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, Philomena), this three-part series moves the story along at a riveting pace. The events leading up to Thorpe’s 1970s court case are both dark and complex, light and funny — often all in the same scene.