"I was rude. I was vile. I was queer. I was myself," Norman Scott triumphantly boasts after his salacious court testimony against his former lover Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe. The U.S. considered the OJ Simpson case the trial of the century, but for England it was the gay Thorpe charged with conspiracy to murder Scott that made headlines. Created by BBC and now available on Amazon Prime, "A Very English Scandal," a three-part/three-hour series, is a breezy dissection of hypocritical British attitudes toward homosexuality and insular homophobia. Presented as a jaunty comic caper, this seemingly absurd but true story must be seen in order to be believed.
In 1961, Thorpe (Hugh Grant), the wealthy, Eton-educated, charismatic youngest leader of a political party in the 20th century, on a remote holiday meets an attractive stable boy, Norman Scott (Ben Wishaw), just released from a psychiatric hospital. Thorpe gives him his card with the instruction to look him up the next time he's in London, which he does a year later after his job has ended unsatisfactorily. Thorpe seduces Scott with a jar of Vaseline, initiating him into gay sex, that later Scott will recall at trial as "having felt like being sawed in half, so that all I could do was bite the pillow!" They begin a secret affair with the closeted, married Thorpe, juggling two separate lives, setting up Scott in a studio apartment, writing affectionate letters to his "bunny," a nickname given to him because of his frightened look on their first encounter. Scott has already suffered several emotional breakdowns, doesn't want to be kept a secret, and resents the restrictions placed on him. He will try to blackmail Thorpe by writing a seven-page letter to Thorpe's mother exposing intimate details about their relationship.
Rather matter-of-factly, Thorpe hatches a lame-brained plot to kill Scott, envisioning it as political strategy, with fellow politician Peter Bessell (Alex Jennings). Previously these two "old queens" had confessed to each other their history of risque gay sexual encounters. The attempted murder was so ludicrous it later became fodder for a famous Peter Cook satire sketch, as it involved recruiting a drunken pilot who bungled the scheme of driving Scott to the countryside. Instead of shooting him, he kills his Great Dane dog Rinka. His gun jams so that Scott escapes. The pilot will be sent to prison for a year, but when released, sells his story to a British tabloid, ultimately implicating Thorpe and three others, leading to their 1979 trial at the Old Bailey. It is not a spoiler to report that after the outrageous remarks by the judge to the jury discrediting the prosecution witnesses and saying Thorpe was a jolly decent chap, he was acquitted of all charges. Amidst the scandal, Thorpe ran for reelection, but lost. Exposed as a homosexual, his reputation disgraced, his political career was over.
Despite the dark humor and whimsical style in which it is told, this story is a needless tragedy about repression, denial, entitlement, snobbery, public bigotry, and disgust with homosexuality. In many ways this sordid tale charts the path of homosexuality in Britain, beginning when it was still a crime, to grudging public acceptance, here raised through the prism of Scott, who, through fits and starts, comes to embrace pride in his gayness. The high point arrives in his testimony when replying to the charge that he was profiteering from his association with Thorpe by giving paid interviews to the media. He says, "I do care how men like me are shoved into corners, masturbated in the dark, then thrown out the door like we're dirt, like we're nothing, that we don't exist and all history books are written with men like me missing. So I will talk and be heard. You can pay me or not, I don't care, but the one thing you won't do is shut me up!"
The other poignant moment occurs when Thorpe is questioned by a friend as to why he took the risk with Scott. He responds that, unlike most of his sexual encounters that often resulted in violence or abuse, he was kind. Although he responds in horror publicly when he is asked whether he loved Scott ("He's a man!"), privately he could never escape his own self-hatred and admit his affection. Politically, Thorpe was enlightened, even supporting the 1967 decriminalization law after meeting with the Conservative sponsor of the bill, Lord Arran, confessing that his closeted brother had committed suicide. Both Thorpe and Scott wind up alone. Thorpe was imprisoned in a loveless marriage undertaken to advance his career, and Scott lived by himself with 11 dogs.
The two leads are brilliant. Going against his deprecating romcom image, Grant (forever Clive Durham in "Maurice") suggests Thorpe may have been a bit of a risk-taking sociopath who uses people. But behind the public charm there is emptiness and shame, humanizing a figure long seen in Britain as a laughing stock. Wishaw conveys the vulnerability yet defiance in his character, more hurt than vengeful, who, like Thorpe, is quite adept at manipulating people, yet has been wounded in the process of discovering who he is. Wishaw's Norman Scott is a fey tour de force. The disparities of power which can be exploited in relationships will resonate for viewers in this #MeToo era. Aided by a witty script by gay writer Russell Davies ("Queer As Folk") and helmed by the straight but LGBTQ-supportive Stephen Frears ("My Beautiful Launderette"), "A Very English Scandal" could easily have been twice as long. It emerges as one of the best LGBTQ television series ever.