Omid Scobie Resurfaces

[NotaDuchessIworkalot]

Looks like the appetite for all things Royal from Britain is not going away soon as his fiction novel Royal Spin is to become a show on Universal Television. They’re a division of Universal Studio Group, who acquired the rights to the show when they took part in an ‘intense bidding war’.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-harry-meghan-markle-omid-scobie-show-b2582621.html

Fuck sake.

Well, after it flops, Universal can use it as a tax write off. I doubt it will be the UK equivalent of the West Wing.

Someone should do a show satirizing the charity award circuit.
"Sir, your popularity numbers are very low among Gen X women. Let's pay money and buy you the Friskies Cat Lover of the Year Award. You just have to forget that you hate cats and fight down the urge to kick them" ( DISCLAIMER: this is a purely hypothetical scene from a non-existent show written by a non- professional writer who does not work at a charity).

I’d watch that! What a great idea. Sort of Best in Show meets The Thick Of It.

I’d watch it. Heavy bidding - hell he’ll probably make a mint. Netflix must be pissed they didn’t get it. 😂

It's fiction? Wtf is this fresh hell?

I googled and they are a pay to view channel with random light weight programmes?

I was listening to a few different Scandal Mongers podcasts and was surprised to hear that Andrew Lownie is of the opinion that Omid Scobie was a good writer. He was referring to Endgame.

From most of the posts on here about him. I had thought he mustn’t be much of a writer at all.

I’m going to go check it out from the library. Lownie’s opinion intrigued me.

His tv series could be good.

“With the British monarchy reeling from a wave of scandals, young American politico Lauren O’Connell is plucked from the White House to breathe new life into the Buckingham Palace communications team and help end the royal family’s streak of bad press.
^^
“But in an institution steeped in tradition and strict protocol, change isn’t easy – or welcome. It turns out the Royal Household can be just as messy and confusing as Capitol Hill,” a logline reads.

The ‘breathe new life into the BP communications team’ is having a bit of a go though. Cheeky bugger.

Anything by Omid Scobie is going to be unintentionally funny ("Finding Freedom"?) so this could be entertaining.

I'm surprised Andrew Lownie approved - it was pretty much panned on release, Standard, NY Times, Washington Post, Telegraph (although that one's unsurprising.) Most reviews agree it was a Sussex puff piece and a hatchet job on the rf. Quelle surprise. That the book is so one sided makes it impossible to take seriously.

Never mind, at least Scobie's making a living

.... his fiction novel

Fiction novel??? What other kind of novel is there?

Oh god it sounds about as crap as Catherine Tate's ill-fated Queen of Oz. And Tate is talented.

It's hard to satirise or dramatise the bizarreness of the Royal Family successfully in any original, watchable way precisely because it is so bizarre. Most productions end up full of tedious expositional dialogue and anachronistic props, looking utterly derivative of one of the many, many previous efforts. For every Spitting Image sketch and fictionalised episode of The Crown, there are dozens of flops. There are also hundreds if not thousands free videos on You Tube and similar platforms. It's a very crowded market.

And let's face it, Omid Scobie is no Armando Iannucci or Hilary Mantel. I suspect his little axe to grind may be rather mangled and lame. All the 'bombshells' against the royal family since 2020 have already been diluted with time and are, by and large, disbelieved.

(Incidentally, as well as being a writing genius, Armando Iannucci is Patron of Child Poverty Action Group and actually does stuff for it.)

"The Windsors" was great. No way Scobie coud top that.

'Good writer' these days means 'infamous person who fortunately doesn't need an expensive full-time ghost writer for a year trying to make sense of what they're alternately mumbling and ranting - we can throw some low-cost editors at it'.

Hence both Omid Scobie and Meghan Thee Sussex both being described as good writers, and Harry not so much.

It was quite brilliant 😊

It sounds to me like the tedious crap that runs ad infinitum on channels like the Hallmark Channel.

We may even be treated to ‘A Royal Spin At Christmas’ if we’re very very lucky. I’d watch that in a so-bad-it’s-good homage to the genre.

Starring Jobbing Actor #1 as Prince William. Co-starring Washed Up Extra From Murder She Wrote as ‘The Wasp’. Special Guest Star Johnny Depp as King Charles because he lost a bet with Dave Grohl. And Re-Introducing Miriam Margolyes as Princess Catherine.

And special guests the corgis.

Could you post a link please ? I have no knowledge of Andrew Lownie claiming that OS is a good writer . A quick google throws up nothing . @

RIP Haydn Gwynne 😢

Yes, I was just thinking that. What a brilliant Camilla! Always with the ciggie. HG will be missed.

The Royals with Elizabeth Hurley was deliciously OTT and brilliant.

@DeftLemonDog

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintMeghanMarkle/comments/18yt0fz/andrew_lownie_on_andrew_golds_show/

It was the Scandal mongers podcast. I’ve listened to numerous ones in the past few weeks so I can’t remember in which episode he said it.

Omid Scobie was not the podcast topic. And it was only a mention by Andrew and it caught me by surprise. I’m going to listen to a couple of the podcasts again when I’ve caught up on ones I haven’t heard yet. So if I hear it again I’ll link the episode here.

I think it’s a pretty good podcast actually. They strive for balance and are quite good at achieving it a lot of the time.

I read Endgame…loved it. It is very well written and highly informative about the media and the press rota for the palaces.