Teen who toppled the government
THE TRIAL OF CHRISTINE KEELER
Sunday, BBC1 9pm
IT’S nearly 60 years on from the Profumo Affair, and the nation is still fascinated by the incredible tale of a 19-year-old model who brought down a government.
As the tongue-in-cheek opening titles explain: “This drama is inspired by real events. Some incidents and characters have been changed for dramatic purposes. But mainly, you couldn’t make it up.”
This glossy six-part drama has an impressive cast, with Ben Miles as oily British minister John Profumo, Emilia Fox as Profumo’s wife Valerie, James Norton as society osteopath Stephen Ward, Sophie Cookson as Christine Keeler and Ellie Bamber as Keeler’s friend Mandy Rice-Davies.
Christine is 19, a showgirl and model whose affair with Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, kick-started the downfall of Harold Macmillan’s Tory government.
In a voice-over, Christine gleefully says: “How can one girl have the power to bring a whole world tumbling down?”
We begin in 1961 when Profumo first claps eyes on her, naked after a swim at a pool party at Viscount Astor’s Cliveden estate in Berkshire.
Their meeting has been arranged by Ward, the society doctor who likes to introduce London girls to his top brass friends.
And so the affair begins.
But Profumo is warned to steer clear of the Ward circle because of the osteopaths links to Russians, and when the affair becomes public, the scandal explodes.
Christine says: “I never wanted the spotlight, but somehow the spotlight found me.”
A gripping dramatisation of a scandal that rocked the nation.