An irresistible retelling of the Duke of York’s grisly own goal
‘Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew desports himself with exactly the right degree of arrogant charm’
Film Scoop Netflix, No cert
★★★★★
TO HAVE been a fly on that wall. Two chairs, six feet apart, in the south drawing room of Buckingham Palace. “Like a western!”, marvels Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) before swooping in, armed with her trusty Bic, a notepad on her knees, and that coiled precision, never more lethal or exacting. Whatever rounds Prince Andrew (Rufus Sewell) thinks he’s firing off seem to ricochet and lodge, for ever, in the very folds of his neck.
Newsnight wanted to put the Duke of York in the hot seat. Little did they know that burbling about his incapacity to sweat would prove such a grisly own goal. How on earth was it allowed to happen? It’s this question that Scoop dramatises with forensic rigour, courtesy of a wickedly astute script by Peter Moffat.
It all started with a picture. Detailed in a snappy 2010 prologue that actually makes tabloid photojournalism exciting, this showed the Prince papped next to Jeffrey Epstein in Central Park, when the latter was already a convicted sex offender. The taint wouldn’t go away, for all the efforts of Andrew’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes – careworn, mumsy, deluded) to clean up his image. For this reason, she arranged a call, then a cocktail, with the Newsnight booker Sam Mcalister (Billie Piper), and the wheels were set in motion for the Prince to have his say.
Scoop makes that coup feel momentous for the BBC, facing budget cuts and unending scrutiny about mattering. This certainly did matter: it’s not as though there’s a prime-time slot reserved annually for grilling a member of the Royal family about purported sex crimes. Maitlis, with the pressure on, was told to go for the jugular, give him nowhere to hide. Here she listens to Mcalister’s advice instead – to guide him into the subject ever so gently, then give him enough rope to hang himself.
For all the sensation their interview would cause, this re-enactment grips consistently as a revolving study in personalities – and not just theirs. A watchful, wary Romola Garai is not messing around as the programme’s editor, Esme Wren. Our real hero, though, is Piper’s Mcalister – a single mum with a reputation for rocking up late, taking long lunches, and not having much to show for them. She’s a veteran schmoozer who feels her groundwork is routinely undervalued, probably because she’s working-class.
We know that Anderson is a dab hand at upper-crust impersonations, and she doesn’t feel stretched as Maitlis – just casually inhabits her to a tee. Sewell must be the revelation. Aided by sagging-chin prosthetics, he desports himself with exactly the right degree of arrogant charm, exploring its limits brilliantly. When Andrew turns on a Palace maid for, of all things, misarranging his soft toys, you feel you’ve eavesdropped on the petulant princeling throwing an eternal wobbly inside. It gains layers – and that’s what sets it apart from The Queen, The Crown, or any other Peter-morgan-written project you might name. The presence of Princess Beatrice at her dad’s preliminary chat with Maitlis and Mcalister made me want to back into my seat cushion like Homer Simpson into a hedge. Meanwhile, the pathetic spectacle of Andrew clambering out of his bath, to a phone exploding with grim news about what was just broadcast, might be the bleakest use of screen nudity in memory.
It’s no laughing matter, obviously, but aspects of the whole saga are still inescapably absurd, and maximally milked without going overboard. The director, Philip Martin, plays everything right to the cusp – where you clamp hand to mouth, aghast at remembering that this trainwreck actually happened, and irresistibly compelled to relive it.
Streaming on Netflix from today