Scoop is a dramatised account of the events leading up to the BBC’s 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. The one he imagined would allow him to put Jeffrey Epstein behind him, but instead put Pizza Express (Woking) on the map, made us want to claw our own faces off with the horror of it, and led to the Queen stripping him of all his royal and military titles. (I think you know you are in trouble with Mummy when this happens.)
Although billed as a ‘film’, this isn’t especially cinematic. It’s more like a bonus episode of The Crown but it is phenomenally cast (Rufus Sewell is a revelation) and you do get to claw your own face off all over again. If, that is, you have any face left.
Written by Peter Moffat and Geoff Bussetil, and directed by Philip Martin, it’s based on the book by Sam McAlister, the Newsnight ‘booker’ who secured the interview, so this is her account. (She serves as an ‘executive producer’, whatever that is.) She is played by Billie Piper as a single mum who does not seem well-liked in the Newsnight office and doesn’t seem to fit in at the BBC. ‘Too Daily Mail,’ the show’s deputy editor complains. ‘An echo chamber,’ McAlister complains back, when asked to book Nigel Farage yet again.
Meanwhile, Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) prowls the office icily and haughtily with her whippet (Moody) always in attendance. Amazon has its own upcoming drama on which the real Maitlis will serve as an ‘executive producer.’ That portrayal may be different. Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes), Prince Andrew’s private secretary, first gets in touch with McAlister when she wants the media to puff his ‘Pitch@Palace’ nonsense. It’s a firm ‘no’ from Newsnight but if other matters were on the table? (‘An hour of television could change everything,’ McAlister will tell her.)
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