A Very British Scandal - BBC1

[southeastdweller]

On tonight at 9.00, it stars Claire Foy and it's from the same people who did A Very English Scandal a few years ago.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b568sr

I also loved her red nails and lipstick.

Claire Foy looks great in the fashions of that era.

I saw her once in Sloane Square a couple of years before her death. She was incredibly beautiful even though she must have been 80. Her phots do not do her justice.

Plodding a bit at first but the lighting ? Why was every interior lit like the blackout was still on ..all lightbulbs 6 volt ?

@SchadenfreudePersonified

Margaret had beautiful dogs all her life , black mini poodles, she seemed to adore them so she couldn't have been that bad.

"Always a poodle, only a poodle! That, and three strands of pearls!" she said. "Together they are absolutely the essential things in life."

I was so disappointed by this. It lacked the verve and humour which distinguished Russell T. Davies's take on the Jeremy Thorpe scandal and so ended up feeling rather conventional and dreary. If the production company was hoping to create an anthology series then they needed to maintain the same tone across the two stories. They should have found a way to have fun with it.

I've ordered myself (on Amazon) a three-string pearl necklace. grin.

Presumably you've already got the hairy male.

@EsmaCannonball

I was so disappointed by this. It lacked the verve and humour which distinguished Russell T. Davies's take on the Jeremy Thorpe scandal and so ended up feeling rather conventional and dreary. If the production company was hoping to create an anthology series then they needed to maintain the same tone across the two stories. They should have found a way to have fun with it.

How would you suggest it was made 'fun?'

It was a shocking,true portrail of how men closed ranks and vilified a woman who dared to enjoy sex. Not sure how you could 'fun it up.'

I wasn't expecting it to be fun. Mind you, I didn't watch A Very English Scandal, so I had no expectations in that respect. I just expected a padded out mainly factual account of what happened, which is what we got.

@EsmaCannonball

I was so disappointed by this. It lacked the verve and humour which distinguished Russell T. Davies's take on the Jeremy Thorpe scandal and so ended up feeling rather conventional and dreary. If the production company was hoping to create an anthology series then they needed to maintain the same tone across the two stories. They should have found a way to have fun with it.

Gosh, I'd totally forgotten it was written by Russell T. Davies. No wonder it was so good. Directed by Stephen Frears too. Really worth catching up with if anyone missed it.

The Thorpe scandal was a complete disgrace. Those of you who dont know about it, please imagine how you would feel about a leader of a political party who had an affair with a rent boy and then arranged to have him murdered as he was becoming a bit of a nuisance. It was jaw dropping. Russell T did a magnificent job of turning the lot into both a what next? drama and a bit of a romp. Hugh Grant was wonderfully sleazy as Thorpe. Given that nobody actually died, the bizarre circumstances offered opportunity for humour. Difficult to raise a laugh from the Duchess's situation though. I was impressed with the overall production.

The Jeremy Thorpe story had institutional homophobia, gay-bashing, suicide, mental illness, blackmail, attempted murder and a dead dog and yet Russell T. Davies managed to find humour and playfulness amidst the darkness and tragedy. The duchess was clearly a woman with charisma and a load of chutzpah and this series needed to bring that out and make it more of a satire on the establishment. It was very flat and boring compared with A Very English Scandal.

I agree esma. Besides which, if it was to be kept darker in tone the marketing was off, and Lucan did it better I thought, as did the drama about the Profumo scandal..

Rightly or wrongly , upper class shagging is often done comically. A sense of entitlement (and boredom) about their behaviour is fairly obvious.

The Duchess was a woman who enjoyed sex. She says so in ep 1. She was certainly a victim of institutional misogyny and that makes the court case the most interesting aspect imo and it seemed really rushed. I would have preferred a drama which centred around how the Duke cornered her. I wonder if living family always complicates these dramas.

@woodhill

because the courts usually look to recover costs from the party with the most means to pay. Given he was cash poor he would have evaded those maintenance payments and court costs. It has been known in similar cases he would have recovered costs from the ex wife. In his case he waited 5 weeks to marry someone after he and Margaret were divorced.

He basically manoeuvered it so that he was broke so nothing could be claimed from him and then moved on to the next host...

Just think of the children caught in the crossfire of the selfishness and entitlement and boredom.

Damaged DCs (deprived of love - boarding school etc) having further damaged DCs.

And then getting positions of power in politics and industry, so it all works out well in the end

I blame Covid. I managed not to watch this. I had been looking forward to it. Bugger.

Can you watch it on catch up, @Deathraystare? It's still on i player.

Gosh, this was miserable viewing! I enjoyed A Very English Scandal so much. This was very one note and grim. Yes, I know it was a grim persecution of a woman by the posh aristocracy. Still found it very monotonous.

Claire Foy looked marvellous though. Her wardrobe was great; loved the aubergine coloured suit she wore for the trial.

Two episodes in and finding it very dull and slow going. They are both such utterly unlikeable people I am wondering why I am devoting my time to watching it. We'll persevere with the last episode, however, as it was an interesting real life case.

It did make me think about that peculiar thing though that the more money and privilege you have, the more terrified you are of losing it and the things you'll do to protect it become more outrageous. In their cases, anyway.

just saw this,
awful treatment of the duchess, the judge apparently took 3 hours to detail her bad behaviour.

And he relished every second of it apparently.

Just finished The Duchess who Dared by Charles Castle and it goes a long way to explain Margaret's early years and what happened to her after the divorce.