Tells us more about today than the early 1960s: BBC1’s A Very British Scandal reviewed

For people who like a good upper-class scandal (or ‘people’, as they’re also known), 1963 was definitely a vintage year. Even before the Profumo affair came along, the divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll offered plenty to enjoy, with its courtroom tales of her 80-odd lovers and that famous Polaroid of her pleasuring a titillatingly anonymous man while still wearing her pearls.

All of which presented something of a problem for BBC1’s three-part dramatisation, A Very British Scandal — and not just because it had to pretend not to be titillated itself. At a time when female blamelessness is such a dominant media theme, could it find a way to make the Duchess seem badly wronged without being anything so demeaning and lacking in agency as a ‘victim’? The answer, much to its own benefit, turned out to be a firm ‘not really’.

In what it clearly regarded as a guaranteed enticement to all viewers, the BBC advertised the programme as a feminist retelling in which ‘Margaret, Duchess of Argyll held her head high with bravery and resilience’ despite the ‘institutionalised misogyny’ of the era.