Scoop Review – ‘Not quite the prince that was promised’

“An hour of tv can change the whole lot,” says one character in Scoop. Effectively, Prince Andrew’s hour-long interview with Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis in 2019 definitely modified issues for the long-suffering employees of the Woking department of Pizza Specific. That landmark second in tv information — wherein the Queen’s son addressed his friendship with convicted paedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, immediately resulting in his retirement from royal duties — is dramatised for this new Netflix movie, which at first look acts as a sort of unofficial The Crown: Season 7. Folks clearly love royal cosplay, the pondering appears to go — why not recreate the British royal household’s most humiliating latest episode?

Focus will inevitably flip to the large, flashy impersonations of the 2 key gamers, and Rufus Sewell is undeniably excellent because the sweatless, gormless Andrew, unrecognisable below prosthetics. Portrayed right here, he’s much less ‘playboy Prince’, extra pathetic little boy caught within the snare of arrested improvement, who blurts out weird sentences like, “Mummy combed my hair,” or “Trousers!” Andrew, who has strenuously denied all prices of wrongdoing, is depicted right here as completely unequipped to satisfy the seriousness of the second. It’s pretty devastating.

Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis is probably much less profitable: there’s a clear bodily resemblance, and she or he nails the hawk-eye steeliness of her journalistic gaze, the way in which she holds a pen as if it have been a sword. However her voice feels too husky, nearer to her tackle Margaret Thatcher in The Crown. It feels, at occasions, extra caricature than character.

Unexpectedly, although, the emphasis will not be actually on the prince or the presenter. As a substitute, it’s on Sam McAlister, the Newsnight producer and visitor booker (the screenplay by Peter Moffat and Geoff Bussetil adapts her e-book) who secured the gig, performed right here with grit and gusto by Billie Piper. She is a drive of nature, on a one-woman mission, and there’s a transparent sense that director Philip Martin is making an attempt to summon the crusading spirit of nice journalism movies like All The President’s Males. To some extent, he’s profitable.

The very best scenes within the movie come throughout the in depth preparation earlier than the large day (“How tough can or not it’s speaking to the Queen’s son a couple of convicted paedophile?” Maitlis deadpans). All sides, the palace and the BBC, war-games the interview, making an attempt to anticipate the opposite, Martin cannily cross-cutting between the 2 separate bunkers. Moffat and Bussetil’s script notes with some perception that it was three girls — Maitlis, McAlister and Newsnight editor Esme Wren (performed right here by Romola Garai) — who made all of it occur, and there are considerate issues of the gender dynamics at play: in a single quiet second, McAlister gently observes to Maitlis that “males like that hate it after they’re not heard”.

The interview itself, with all of its bonkers, now-infamous moments (“unbecoming”, “a handy place to remain”, the shortage of sweat, the Pizza Specific reference), kinds the grand centrepiece of the movie, and it definitely captures the surreality of all of it, producers gawping in disbelief on the sidelines whereas the royal family appears cheerfully completely satisfied about all of it. However although it’s a technically trustworthy recreation, it feels relatively missing a standpoint. This can be a very well-known and really latest interview, one which you’ll watch — in full — on the BBC iPlayer. What’s Scoop including to the desk, past barely first-base “journalism is vital” themes?

It’s not clear. A lot of the narrative, outdoors of the interview, feels passive, issues taking place elsewhere: characters watching information break on TV screens and cell phones. And whereas the movie appears snug to play the extra ridiculous moments for laughs, it struggles to impart the seriousness of Epstein’s crimes, or the issues Andrew has been accused of. (As The Crown did, it additionally has a barely over-inflated perception within the significance of the monarchy.) It finally feels a bit like the outline one of many characters has for Newsnight itself: powerful, however by no means sensational.