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).
Sienna Miller is Sophie, his wife, the consummate political spouse whose Boden advert life - wearing wide-brimmed hats and cable knits on weekends in the country, smiling politely at drinks receptions - falls off its axis after a double whammy of revelations about her husband. When she learns he has been having an affair with his younger aide Olivia (Naomi Scott), she is willing to put on a brave face and rally for the sake of their two children (a slimy, unscrupulous spin doctor, convincingly played by Joshua McGuire, notes that the relationship might help him “gain some fans among old male voters”). Then he is accused of rape, arrested and brought to trial; the prosecuting barrister is Kate, played by Michelle Dockery, who has built a reputation winning cases like this one.
Her job, she tells the jury, is to prove that although James and Olivia had previously had a consensual relationship, in the instance in question, “what began as a yes very quickly became a no”. At first it seems like Olivia will be sidelined in all of this, shown either through the eyes of her alleged attacker, in the imaginary scenarios that Sophie tortures herself with, or in Kate’s arguments, but that changes around the episode three mark, when she takes to the stand to give evidence.
The courtroom showdown sets the stage for an engaging exploration of weighty issues like agency and consent in a post-MeToo landscape, as well as the entitlement of the upper classes, and the boys club environment of Westminster. These story threads are echoed in flashbacks to Sophie and James’ student days at Oxford, when the latter was, of course, a member of a Bullingdon-esque dining club called the Libertines, along with the now-Prime Minister Tom. There are other refractions of the main narrative outside of parliament too: Dockery’s character is in a sort-of relationship with the man who was her “pupil master” when she was a trainee. He dismisses her discussion of the power dynamic between Olivia and James by claiming it is filled with “buzzwords” - but he would, wouldn’t he?
There is a third act twist which perhaps stretches credulity - and legal ethics - to breaking point, but by then, you may well be too wrapped up in the theatrics of the court case to care (see also: Nicole Kidman’s character defending herself in the climactic custody case in BLL series two, and the vast majority of the plot of The Undoing). Kelley always executes these set piece showdowns well - where he and Gibson flounder slightly is in conveying the specific Britishness that has conspired to create born-to-rule men like James and Tom. Their script suffers from a certain Bridgerton-itis: a reliance on overzealously sprinkling dialogue with “indeed” and long, studied sentences to flag to an international audience that we are, indeed, in England. Many lines feel inauthentic and over-written when placed in the mouths of characters, taking the bite out of some of the show’s big moments. Miller’s performance as Sophie is powerful but her final judgement on her husband is overshadowed a little by the stilted monologue she’s been handed.
Still, there are handfuls of well-observed moments that go some way in making up for these jarring ones. Every time that her young son repeats the phrase “Whitehouses always win!” to garner approval from his dad, you can see a part of Sophie dying inside; Hannah Dodd, who plays the character in her university days, does perhaps too good a job of portraying the carelessness of a certain cadre of wealthy student, and how they might dismiss anyone who doesn’t have similar social capital.
The final plot manoeuvre is tidily satisfying but, again, pushes believability to its limits. Perhaps it’s hard for writers to dish out narrative justice in a way that feels authentic when we’ve seen so many real stories about men like this - and know that they rarely face any meaningful consequences for wrongdoing.
