Just 5 months after the movie Scoop premiered on Netflix, Amazon has unveiled its personal tackle Prince Andrew’s now-infamous Newsnight interview.
While Netflix’s movie largely informed the story from the angle of former Newsnight producer Sam McAlister, the three-part collection A Very Royal Scandal centres round journalist Emily Mailtis, who additionally serves as its govt producer.
The former BBC presenter is portrayed within the new drama by Ruth Wilson, whereas Michael Sheen undergoes fairly the transformation to play the Duke of York.
Critics have already been having their say on A Very Royal Scandal, and whereas they haven’t precisely been slating it, most are questioning whether or not there’s a necessity for 2 explorations of the identical occasion throughout the area of six months – notably for one thing that befell in such current historical past.
Lead actors Michael and Ruth’s performances have largely been praised, however questions stay over how efficiently the drama handles the thorny material.
Here’s a collection of what critics must say…
“I’d crawl over harsh terrain to see Sheen and Wilson in just about anything. After AVRS I felt I had. His chameleonic power seems muted, while her attempt to capture Maitlis’s grave diction makes the broadcaster sound glutinously smug.”
Christopher Raphael/Blueprint/Sony Pictures Television
“This is the second recreation of the 2019 encounter that proved so disastrous for the Duke of York, and it definitely feels like one too many. Why are we seeing this again when anyone who wants to revisit the actual interview can do so on YouTube? Who cares about the planning meetings and the editing and Maitlis worrying about what to wear?”
“The main problem with both of these well-made, finely performed productions is that they miss the larger story. The collision of journalistic rigour and a near-farcical act of self-sabotage made the interview a sensation, but the serious, sinister content of that discussion is something that these dramas only superficially grapple with.”
“A Very Royal Scandal barely scratches the surface of Andrew’s opaque relationship with Epstein, offering little more than a few brief flashbacks to the two interacting, with only passing mention made to the prince’s financial entanglement with the financier. It’s only in the last of the three episodes that the series touches on anything that could be described as revelatory.”
Christopher Raphael/Blueprint/Sony Pictures Television
“A Very Royal Scandal desperately doesn’t want you to think it’s self-congratulatory, but its very existence argues otherwise […] The original interview was a television spectacle but its impact in the grand scheme of things was limited. For A Very Royal Scandal to be more than a flimsy footnote, it needed to tell us more than what we already knew.”
“Like Maitlis, A Very Royal Scandal handles itself with comportment and class, but as a drama, it is too frictionless for its own good.”
“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.”
“While it’s a far more satisfying version of this story than the one retold in Scoop, A Very Royal Scandal may suffer from coming out second and relitigating (very recent) history. If we were all there to see the real thing unfold the first time around, then watched the movie version, is there an audience who wants more?”
“Sheen and Wilson put in hefty, quality performances (I also loved Alex Jennings as Sir Edward Young). It feels a bit like what The Crown might have produced if it had covered this car-crash event […] Is the series self-admiring? Yes, inevitably. But there is much to admire.”
“This is probably the best dramatic version of this story we were ever going to get on screen, at least this soon after the event. Then again, if in 10 years the events are reappraised and a third iteration is made – and let’s face it, it probably will be – we can always circle back.”
A Very Royal Scandal is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
