A Very British Scandal

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.