Big Little Lies and The Undoing have established David E. Kelley as one of television’s top chroniclers of power and privilege. His latest project, a collaboration with House of Cards writer Melissa James Gibson, sees him turn his gaze to the other side of the Atlantic - specifically, to the corridors of Westminster, and the cloisters of the University of Oxford. The result is a twist-laden courtroom thriller that feels a little lost in translation: you might end up wishing that the source material been tackled by, say, a Sarah Phelps or a James Graham.
Adapted from Sarah Vaughan’s 2018 novel, the plot of Anatomy of a Scandal still feels like it could have been ripped from the headlines. Rupert Friend plays James Whitehouse, an ambitious junior minister who, everyone in his orbit is at great pains to remind us, was once voted number one on “sexy MP dot com” (“a first for a Conservative MP”, says the Prime Minister, who is inevitably his close university pal).
