I think it’s safe to say that few episodes of Newsnight have attracted quite the attention that the 2019 special with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, did. From Pizza Express in Woking to the Falklands-based perspiration deficiency, the pow-wow has entered the pantheon of televisual car crashes. And yet, behind all the memes, behind the skewering of the royal family, there is a story here about alleged abuse and the determination required to bring that to light, which is depicted, now, in Amazon Prime’s three-part drama, A Very Royal Scandal.
Prince Andrew (Michael Sheen) is no stranger to controversy. He lives with his ex-wife Fergie (Claire Rushbrook) and they’ve been tabloid fodder for decades. But things become a bit more serious when the BBC’s Newsnight team, led by Emily Maitlis (Ruth Wilson) and Esme Wren (Lydia Leonard) pick up the scent of a long-running story: the Prince’s involvement with the sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein. As the rumours mount, Newsnight offers Andrew a chance to clear his name by sitting down for a one-on-one interview with their anchor. What ensues is, in the words of Sir Edward Young (Alex Jennings), “a clusterf*** worthy of the Kardashians”.
Of course, we all know this, because we watched, with mounting incredulity, while the man who was eighth in the line of succession was hoist with his own petard. We might also, plausibly, know it from the Netflix film Scoop, which dramatised these same events just six months ago, with a cast led by Gillian Anderson as Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as Andrew. This confrontational scheduling has led to some to-ing and fro-ing about the facts: Netflix’s film, based on the book by producer Sam McAlister, championed her role in proceedings; she was played by Billie Piper. She is scarcely even a character in Amazon’s account, which has been made with Maitlis’s seal of approval (indeed, she is an executive producer and has been on the publicity tour for it).
Wilson’s Maitlis is a workaholic, struggling with mundane tasks like picking up dog excrement while the country falls apart around her. Wilson, who has always had quite a striking voice, goes fully raspy in her mimicry of Maitlis’s deep, distinctive tones. Sheen’s version of the Prince, meanwhile, is less cartoonish than, say, his takes on Chris Tarrant in Quiz or Tony Blair in The Deal. He focuses more on mannerisms than voice (which is neither especially distinctive, nor particularly familiar to the public) or physical similarity. What both Wilson and Sheen manage, however, is to act out the acting of their characters. Maitlis, putting on a show of defiance in the wake of internal criticism; Andrew (who has denied all wrongdoing) confecting an entire life for himself in his own defence.
“Weirdly guileless,” is how Maitlis describes Andrew. And yet the drama seems to hint at the Prince’s guilt. He witnesses flashbacks to sweaty nights at Tramp (the club where he allegedly danced with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre), and appears in conspiratorial sequences with Epstein himself (an uncanny John Hopkins). After all the brouhaha about Baby Reindeer and the ethical implications of presupposing a singular truth, will anyone care that A Very Royal Scandal does much the same for Prince Andrew? One suspects not. The three episodes are indemnified by the Prince’s grotesquery, not to mention his obvious stupidity. “I don’t need your permission to do an interview,” he rants at an off-camera Prince Charles. “I fought in the f***ing Falklands!”
With the buffoonish Andrew on one side of the interview table and the surgical Maitlis on the other, the show feels like watching a fox wriggle its way into a trap. “You can handle her,” blindly loyal advisor Amanda Thirsk (Joanna Scanlan) tells the Duke, when he clearly can’t. This makes for rather a self-congratulatory tone that some viewers will find grating. And this might not have been the best week for Beeb propaganda about their ability to winkle out an alleged “kiddy fiddler”. But most absent from the drama is a proper discussion about, firstly, the impact of the allegations on the victim, Giuffre, and, secondly, the myriad other victims of Epstein’s abuse. Only in the third episode does it transition from journalistic cat and mouse to an introspection on one of the most shocking abuses of power in modern history. “For most people, me and Prince Andrew are the story,” Maitlis, finally, announces. “But not Epstein’s victims.” She could just as easily have said “for most episodes”.
This enlightenment comes too late to give A Very Royal Scandal any moral credibility. Instead, it is a well-acted, well-written peek behind the scenes of newsgathering. It romps along at a clip and, as its rather twee title suggests, gets a few good kicks into the British monarchy. But where the Duke of York’s 50-minute sit-down interview with Newsnight felt like it gazed into the dark recesses of power, A Very Royal Scandal only really gazes into the navel of the BBC.