In the Netflix drama Anatomy of a Scandal, a Tory MP, James Whitehouse (Rupert Friend), confesses to his wife, Sophie (Sienna Miller), that he has been having an affair with a parliamentary aide, and that the story is about to break in the tabloids. Whitehouse, a supercilious ex-public schoolboy with a house in Belgravia, two perfect children and a live-in nanny, believes his indiscretion to be a mere hiccup in his upward political trajectory. A place in the cabinet after the next reshuffle is all but assured, not least because the PM is an old chum from his Oxford days where they were both members of a Bullingdon-esque club called the Libertines.
But then the police turn up as Whitehouse is leaving the House of Commons and inform him that the aide in question, Olivia Lytton (Naomi Scott), has made an allegation of rape. In a moment of slow-motion surrealism that has prompted widespread mirth on social media, we watch Whitehouse being lifted into the air and thrown backwards as if he has, literally, been punched in the gut. The trauma, it appears, is all his.
