A Very British Scandal

Claire Foy and Paul Bettany play the warring spouses. They are both exceptional, and while the case has fewer moving parts than the Thorpe affair, less political machination, the result is just as compelling. ... We have a candidate for the most stylish drama of the year. One of the saddest, too.

A Very British Scandal is a sophisticated piece of television that delivers in every department. Phelps' exquisite turn of phrase is flexed to full capacity throughout as she seamlessly straddles both high drama and comedy.

An entertaining, beautifully filmed, and dynamically acted portrait.

A Very British Scandal benefits from fine performances and a scandalous story that touches both on early feminism and salacious scandal.

Ms. Foy keeps one entranced and is abetted by the work of the series’ makeup artists (the designer was Catherine Scoble; the supervisor was Suzi Long) and costume designer Ian Fulcher. ... Mr. Bettany, who’s a little young for the term “beloved,” is an extremely likable actor, but he’s also good at being morally dubious. He makes the allegedly high-born Ian convincingly dissolute, insouciant and seedy.

A Very British Scandal is a luscious, slow-paced and often funny treat and a fine showcase of Foy and Bettany’s exquisite acting.

Scandal ultimately rushes through the true scandal of the union's ugly dissolution, in which Margaret was essentially put on trial for being a woman who enjoyed sex. ... Still, Foy and Bettany make for a brilliantly broken couple, so let this Scandal deliver your Brit fix before The Crown returns this fall.

Over the three-episode trajectory, Foy and Bettany are at the top of their games with emotional performances that will undoubtedly garner attention come awards season. Their driving takes, along with the beautiful cinematography and world-building that went into the period piece are indeed the main reasons to watch. ... However, if the point is to remind viewers of the people and motives at the heart of this story, there’s a failed opportunity to expand the characters beyond previously spilled ink.

A taut and tawdry three-part docudrama. [25 Apr - 8 May 2022, p.5]

It isn’t as pleasurable as A Very English Scandal, nor does it cut as deep, even if Bettany and Foy are entirely worth watching and some of the modern echoes hit home.

While [A Very English Scandal] was an effervescent, almost feelgood trot through Thorpe's Old Bailey trial, this feels bleaker and sadder. ... [A] series which gets better with each episode.

Unfortunately, A Very British Scandal is a dull, lifeless retelling that wants very badly to say something but—just like Anatomy of a Scandal—delivers little more than banal cruelty from the extremely wealth.

[Bettany's] depiction of Ian's cruel frigidity is a match by Foy's sharpness, as she trades the distant stateliness she brought to "The Crown" for fumes of aristocratic entitlement. Together they duel with a restrained sadism that prevents the story from whirling into melodrama, even when his temper explodes. ... "A Very British Scandal" exists to illustrate the double standard society applies to men and women in measuring individual culpability, although the Argylls' tenacious rancor submerges that point too often.

As the violent, manipulative alcoholic and the vain, snobbish fabricator punch and counterpunch in “A Very British Scandal,” the opaqueness of the characters gets tedious and increasingly mystifying. ... Bettany, playing the more shallowly drawn of the two, fares better. He is thoroughly convincing as a smooth-talking, sociopathic cad. ... Foy gives it a valiant try — it’s hard to imagine a more expert performance in the role. But she’s trying to make sense of a cipher.

The Argylls’ duel has the potential to be salacious, and it surely was at the time, but now it’s more sad than anything. While the show clearly aims to lift up Margaret in absentia, instead it just makes viewers feel pretty disgusted by the whole affair.