Hugh Grant is the best thing by miles in the BBC adaptation of John Preston’s best-selling book, says Dan Slevin.
Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe, leaving another ill-fated assignation with Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw). Photo: BBC/Amazon
As a youngster growing up in the UK, I received my first exposure to newspapers in the late 70s, a time of black and white and “red tops”. The two biggest stories I remember – so much so that for a long time they were merged in my mind as one giant posh-person scandal – were the mysteriously Lord Lucan who had disappeared after the murder of his children’s nanny and the long running saga of Jeremy Thorpe, the high-profile politician accused of ordering the murder of his former lover Norman Scott.
It seemed to me at the time that rich and powerful British men seemed to be in perpetual trouble with the law and their wives and, if we’re honest, that’s not too far from the truth (if you discount the fact that Thorpe, as leader of the third party in a two-party state, wasn’t actually very powerful).
He was high profile, though. A long-time local MP from a political family, Thorpe was ambitious, intelligent and charming. As leader of the Liberal Party (now subsumed into the Lib-Dems) Thorpe saw himself as the antidote to extremism on both sides – the voice of decent British values like reason and fair play. But he was also gay and – at a time when it was dangerous and illegal – he was also not very discrete.
Ben Whishaw as Photo: BBC/Amazon
The three-part series about Thorpe and Scott, A Very English Scandal, is an entertaining adaptation of John Preston’s 2016 book of the same name by Russell T. Davies, best-known for Queer as Folk and the 21st century Doctor Who reboot. Davies is well-supported by veteran director Stephen Frears, making a return to television after 15 years away and enjoying himself in the process.
They all appear to be having a good time, none more so than the Hugh Grant as Thorpe. After spending most of his career appearing to not really care about the films he was making – I once had the deep misfortune to review a film he made with Sarah Jessica Parker called Did You Hear About the Morgans? and for all the world he looked as if he would rather be at the proctologist – but in 2018, thanks to this and Paddington 2, he appears to have his mojo back.
Jeremy Thorpe (Hugh Grant) meets Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw) at the House of Commons in A Very English Scandal. Photo: BBC/Amazon
Neither he nor an excellent Ben Whishaw as Scott bear much resemblance to their real-life counterparts, but the film gets the gist of the story correct, even if the light-hearted tone sometimes seems inappropriate for a story that features the unfortunate deaths of two women who came into the Thorpe/Scott orbit (not to mention poor Rinka the Great Dane who was shot and killed in the alleged attempt on Scott’s life in 1975).
That botched murder (or scare tactic) was what led to Thorpe going on trial at the Old Bailey in 1979 and was probably about the time that I started seeing his name in the papers. Homosexuality had been made (mostly) legal in England and Wales in 1967 but Thorpe was almost certainly correct that he wouldn’t have sustained a political career had he come out and insisted on doubling-down – as it were – on his story forever after.
I have one final – minor – concern and that’s the title. It may be “A Very English Scandal” but several of the conspirators were Welsh. On second thoughts, that might make the scandal itself even more English…
A Very English Scandal is a BBC production playing now on Sky’s SoHo channel.
