A VERY BRITISH SCANDAL

AVery American Scandal? Sorry, not interested. A Very Australian Scandal? Thanks but we’ll pass. A Very Kiwi Scandal? Get out. A Very British Scandal? Now we’re talking. If there’s one thing the old mother country has always done better than anywhere else it’s a tawdry scandal. Further proof should you need it can be found in the follow-up to 2018’s A Very English Scandal (now with added Scotland).

The prestige BBC miniseries tells the story of the marriage of Ian and Margaret Campbell, aka the Duke and Duchess of Argyll — and the couple’s extraordinary divorce case (Argyll v Argyll), which was the talk of the tabloids in 1963.

The first episode of the three-part series takes us back 16 years prior, when the debonair Ian (Paul Bettany) recognises the chic Margaret (Claire Foy) on a train. He recalls seeing her at a soiree in Paris years earlier: “I said, ‘There’s the girl I’m going to marry’.” "Who’d you say that to?" she asks. “My wife,” he replies in a sly drawl.

From there it’s a sordid and steamy procession of dimly lit castles, fast boats and mid-century sunglasses, with lashings of dramatic foreshadowing. “We have to promise,” she says to him at one of the aforementioned castles, “that we will never ever bore one another.”

Another example arrives in the form of a letter from the Duke’s old wife to his new one after he remarries. “I hope,” she writes, “you never have to know the agony of having your private life laid bare for all to see.”

We get there soon enough, but a scandal is nothing without a back story. And this one truly seems to have it all. If rich people being awful to each other is your thing, this is very much the scandal for you.