Well-made, perfectly acted, accurately set, this drama riveted me, mostly for the wrong reasons, and left me uncomfortably disturbed. It highlighted one of the most worrying trends in modern discourse – the feminisation of experience, where feeling has become truth and powerful men are always villains.
In the background of a rape trial, the wife of an accused senior Tory minister is portrayed as a kind of pivot of truth and moral integrity around which the drama revolves. She has loved and trusted her husband James since they were at Oxford together and they now have two young children. They both come from highly privileged backgrounds and this privilege seems to act like an insulating blanket against the serious disruption a marriage breakdown might cause the likes of you and me; in the series the wealth and privilege is shown, on the whole, as a good thing.
At first Sophie stands squarely behind James as he stands trial for the alleged rape of Olivia, his young research assistant. Both parties freely admit they had a five-month affair. The alleged rape occurred in a moment of passion, in a tiny lift, a week after James broke off the affair, very much against Olivia’s wishes.
It quickly emerges that there is word from a former Oxford administrator that James had been accused of sexually assaulting a young friend of Olivia’s during a night of wild partying at the end of their Oxford year. We are shown the event in flashback and, critically, it is clearly not rape although we, the viewers, are meant to accept that it was in fact sexual assault because it was sudden and unexpected and the girl, Holly, quickly regretted it. The sequence we are shown, however, makes it clear that Holly never declined or objected verbally and offered no physical resistance, in fact the naïve virgin, overcome by being kissed and embraced by the most desirable member of their group, played first a willing part and then a passive one. A jury being shown a full video of the event would certainly have acquitted Tom. There is a strong suggestion that a ‘supportive’ friend was behind the eventual complaint to the administrator. Holly herself has vanished, supposedly to Australia, but we gradually realise that Holly is in fact Kate, the crown prosecutor, drastically remodelled and living a new life. This constitutes a serious ethical breach and Kate and her ‘supportive’ friend Liz know this and agonise together about it.
Now a diversion on my part, if you will excuse me, on the subject of ‘supportive’ female friends. This is a personal tender spot. Decades ago I was in a stable, de facto relationship with the mother of my two then very young children. She was a school teacher at a Catholic boys’ school. She and a couple of her fellow women teachers used to gather every Friday night and get drunk at our house. They would sit around mocking men and making anti-male jokes in the hearing of my son, who was old enough to get the gist of what they were saying although I would do my best to divert him. They ‘supported’ her by validating and encouraging behaviour that would eventually wreck our relationship, very much to her regret. She used to have temper tantrums. I detest family arguments and these tantrums eventually became unbearable. But a woman’s anger is her birthright in this rotten male-dominated world, declared her friends; she had nothing to regret or apologise for. The furies continued until I could stand it no longer and ended the relationship.
It has been my long experience over the ensuing decades that, while most men will not shrink from telling a mate that he is making a mistake, that he should dial it down, stop cheating or whatever, support is often viewed by women friends only as agreement, encouragement, validation, regardless of the rights, wrongs or advisability of her actions. Anything that could be seen as criticism is to be avoided as ‘unsupportive’.
This is the role played by Liz, a schoolteacher and Sophie’s friend, when she learns of her situation. Although she points out the perils of Kate’s predicament she does not insist that Kate should recuse herself from the case or threaten to blow the whistle, even though she knows that, in reality, Kate is prosecuting James not for the possible rape of Olivia but for what she is now convinced was her own rape. It is only when Kate tells Liz that she is sure that Sophie has recognised her that Liz urges her to cleverly scuttle her own case, as a conviction would probably result in her exposure, ending her career and quite possibly seeing her in prison.
At no point in the narrative is it suggested that Kate is not one of the heroines of the story, when in fact she is persecuting a man for entirely personal reasons, for a crime he did not commit. In any modern drama a male acting like that would be painted as a wrongdoer, quite justifiably.
Meanwhile the pressure is eroding Sophie and James’ marriage. He is trying his best to be completely honest, confessing to other matters which he could easily have concealed. However, he tells one lie in his testimony, denying that during the alleged rape that he called Olivia a ‘pricktease’. It becomes clear to the viewers, but not to James, that Sophie is starting to doubt every word he says. In a big confessional scene he tells her that on the night of the event with Holly his best friend Tom, now the Prime Minister, had obtained some heroin and shared it with Alex, who, in a thoroughly unconvincing scene, becomes convinced he can fly and jumps to his death from a building. (Hallucinogens have occasionally persuaded someone that they can fly; heroin is not one of them.) He tells Sophie that he disposed of the foil of heroin he grabbed from Tom by throwing it into a rubbish bin. Thus, technically, he had been an accessory after the fact to the crime of … what, we might ask. Manslaughter? It’s a stretch which we are expected to make.
Since the rape is simply two conflicting and uncorroborated stories James is acquitted. As James sets out to celebrate Sophie vanishes. She visits Liz, asking where she might be able to find Holly because she wants to ask her a question. Liz tells her Holly is long gone but the answer to the question is ‘Yes’. Sophie then has a secret meeting with Kate, in which she tells Kate that she has called a friend in the media and that the government is about to implode. In the final scenes we see Tom being put in a police car while the Prime Minister makes a statement to the media.
So the whole thing ends in an absurdity. There is no evidence of any crime. There is one piece of hearsay from Sophie that James had disposed of heroin, many leagues short of anything like an evidential basis for a prosecution, but the convention must be obeyed that the bad powerful man, who has in fact done everything in his power to be honest with Sophie, must nevertheless be carted off to his well-merited imprisonment. Sophie, brave heroine, is shown cavorting with her joyful children in the fields in front of their gorgeous cottage on the Devon coast, which I found highly distasteful. They had just seen their beloved father taken to prison. What were the makers of this programme thinking?
In sum, not very much, wrapping up this glossy feminist clap-trap with final scenes that were equally ludicrous and repellent.
Anatomy of a Scandal was in the Netflix Global Top 10 of most-watched English language series for five weeks, holding the number one position in its second week.
- Wikipedia entry
Play With Strangers 