Comedy and tragedy
A Very English Scandal DVD (Sony Pictures, £12.99, cert: 15)
From the perspective of 2018, it seems an extraordinary decision for the jury to have reached. In June 1979, following a six-week trial, Jeremy Thorpe was acquitted on charges of conspiracy to murder and incitement to murder relating to his former lover, Norman Scott. Yet, as Russell T Davies’ acclaimed dramatisation of the so-called Thorpe affair makes clear, these were different times.
It’s a story that begins in the early 1960s, when the relationship between Thorpe and Scott began. As Thorpe’s career progressed and he became leader of the Liberals, a nationally important figure, the affair became a secret that had at all costs to be kept out of the public domain. This led to a hitman being employed in a bungled plot. The triumph of Davies’ script – based on a book by John Preston – is to balance the humour of things going wrong and the judge’s ludicrously one-sided summation of the case with the human tragedies. Stephen Frears’ direction is unflashy but sure, while the cast – including Ben Whishaw, who brings a battered dignity to Scott, and Hugh Grant, a revelation as the ambitious Thorpe – is terrific throughout the film.