Amazon’s A Very English Scandal Review

This is the full series review for all three episodes of A Very English Scandal, which premieres on Amazon’s Instant Video platform Friday, June 29th.

The series aired already in the U.K. on BBC One.

Using a delightfully bustling pace, and featuring a magnificently sociopathic Hugh Grant, Amazon’s new miniseries, A Very English Scandal, playfully recounts the Jeremy Thorpe sex and attempted murder scandal from early 1970s England – with Grant as Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as Thorpe’s scorned and unstable once-upon-a-time lover, Norman Scott.

Written by Russell T Davies (Doctor Who, Queer as Folk), adapted from John Preston’s book, and directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, The Queen), A Very English Scandal adopts a jolly, fun “truth is stranger than fiction” approach to the proceedings, giving the entire tale a calm comedic sheen that borders, at times, on cracking apart the fourth wall. It’s a devilishly enjoyable tone that’s reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!” – or even the Coens’ Fargo, which adopted a similar tone despite presenting a fake “true story.”

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