If the popularity of shows like The Undoing and Succession has taught us anything, it’s that there’s something cathartic about watching the private lives of the rich and powerful come undone. It’s a fact not lost on David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies) and Melissa James Gibson (House Of Cards), the creative forces driving Netflix’s new courtroom drama Anatomy Of A Scandal, a lacerating and compulsively watchable adaptation of Sarah Vaughan’s based-on-too-many-true-stories-to-name-just-one 2018 novel about a sexual consent scandal among the British elite and the women caught up in it.
For MP James Whitehouse (Rupert Friend – all smugness and smarm), having to tell wife Sophie (Sienna Miller) that he’s been sleeping with aide Olivia (Naomi Scott) is unfortunate but not disastrous. As Sophie fields side-eyes at the school gates, putting on a brave face for the sake of the kids and her husband’s career, James and his colleagues – most Oxfordian pals, some fellow Libertines (a debauched, Droogish mirror of the infamous Bullingdon Club) – shrug off the affair with staggering indifference. PM Tom Southern (Geoffrey Streatfeild) snaffles Percy Pigs in James’ office and chucks Latin assurances his way, while No. 10’s insufferable comms director Chris Clarke (Joshua McGuire) sees the fling as a potential polling boon. “Sex doesn’t kill a career these days,” he muses. “You might even win some fans among the older male voter.” He’s not exactly wrong.
It’s Dockery’s performance as doggedly determined prosecuting lawyer Kate Woodcroft that really stuns.
It takes Olivia accusing James of raping her in a Commons lift to (quite literally) knock the insouciant MP off his feet. As James’ career, public image and marriage spiral, the drama swiftly relocates to the Old Bailey, where we follow the disgraced MP’s trial from opening arguments to final verdict. From there, the action oscillates between the rigours of the judicial process, the toll the case takes on all involved parties both in the courthouse and behind closed doors, and a synaptic haze of flashbacks that reveal James’ web of deceit and his debauched Libertine youth, slowly exposing the rot that permeates Westminster’s cabinet. In Gibson and Kelley’s more than capable hands, watching the threads slowly pull themselves together makes for a gripping, thought-provoking viewing experience.
As James’ lawyer Angela Regan (a superb Josette Simon) picks apart Olivia’s testimony, Gibson and Kelley’s script nimbly manoeuvres legal jargon to engage with topical discussions surrounding consent, the corrupting influence of power, and the point at which the morally murky becomes the criminally prosecutable. DP Balazs Bolygo’s scrutinous lens captures the moments of rage, anguish, and abject horror engendered by the trial with needling clarity, while specific phrases, actions, and painful recollections see the courtroom dissolve into the characters’ lived experiences of the events being recalled through clever editing and fluid camerawork. It’s an inspired artistic choice that highlights the ways PTSD often imprisons survivors in a cycle of reliving their trauma, while also functioning as a reminder that, with time, guilt becomes a burden that no amount of privilege can bury.
Despite some frankly wild leaps in logic as the series progresses, Gibson and Kelley manage to keep the show grounded thanks to the stellar performances of Miller, Scott, and Michelle Dockery, and their commitment to centring the three women’s experiences throughout the trial. Miller portrays the familial disintegration incurred by her husband’s deceit with heartbreaking stoicism, while Scott embodies the way women are victim-blamed with flooring rawness and righteous indignation. It’s Dockery’s performance, however, as doggedly determined prosecuting lawyer Kate Woodcroft, that really stuns; her fixed stare alchemically evincing both the steel of an expert who’s spent years fighting sexual assault cases and the glassiness of a woman whose work is inextricably, deeply rooted in her own traumatised past.
The heaviness of the subject matter isn’t all-consuming – Gibson and Kelley know viewers can’t binge something they can’t also comfortably consume and digest. The series zips along nicely with on-the-nose needle-drops like ‘Heads Will Roll’ encouraging us to find enjoyment in watching the halls of power crumble from within, while horror-inflected dream sequences, salacious twists, and tantalising cliffhangers recreate the page-turner quality of Vaughan’s book. The great trick to Anatomy Of A Scandal’s success, however, is that its efforts to entertain never undermine its commitment to holding those in power accountable. Well, someone’s got to.
