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Slight but spirited, the new Netflix film Scoop excavates a recent historical event that even The Crown wouldn’t dare to touch despite its interest in both the British royal family and scandals. Framed from the perspective of a collective of BBC journalists, Scoop traces the events leading up to Prince Andrew’s jaw-dropping disintegration on national television, when he was caught like a deer in the headlights while being interviewed about his friendship with convicted sex pest Jeffrey Epstein.
Gillian Anderson plays Emily Maitlis, the long-time BBC news anchor who found herself in the enviable position of having secured an exclusive interview with the disgraced Duke of York, days after Epstein’s suicide. It was the most widely-watched BBC Newsnight interview of all time, exposing Andrew’s — and by extension, the royal family’s — entitlement. It never occurred to Andrew that putting himself on TV trial could ever go south. Played with a savage ruthlessness by an unrecognisable Rufus Sewell, Andrew was convinced that all he had to do to make his problems disappear was to shrug, as if to say, “I had no idea.”
But Scoop is no Frost/Nixon, that terrific Ron Howard film about David Frost’s legendary interview of Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal — the movie isn’t so much about the interaction itself as it is about the backroom negotiations that led to it. For this, much of the credit must go to Sam McAlister, a ‘booker’ for the BBC who leveraged great luck with her journalistic instincts to land the interview before the competition. Scoop is based on a book written by McAlister, played here by a feisty Billie Piper, which explains why she gets the most sympathetic portrayal of anybody in the film.
But even though we enter the story through her point-of-view, Piper is only given a ‘with’ credit. Anderson, who accepts the baton of responsibility only during the interview sequence in the third act, is given top-billing instead. We don’t learn much about her, other than the fact that she’s committed to her job, and that she conducts herself like a cross between Cruella de Vil and Margaret Thatcher, the latter of whom Anderson played so memorably in The Crown. McAlister’s an even bigger blank slate. Her motivations are made all the murkier thanks to the writers’ curious decision to introduce company-wide layoffs. This makes McAlister’s determination to pursue the story seem more like a selfish attempt to preserve her job than an act of altruism.
Scoop isn’t a character drama, however. Directed by Crown alum Philip Martin, the movie is presented as a breakneck thriller, and at that, it is immensely successful. While the Epstein stuff unfolds in the background, the protagonists begin circling Andrew, ready to pounce. It’s all so compellingly staged that for an hour and 40 minutes, you completely forget how easily everything fell together. The BBC’s pursuit of Andrew was anything but that; he entertained the possibility of sitting down for an interview himself, without offering much resistance. He also repeatedly failed to take the many exits that Emily offered to him during the interview, consistently tripping over himself as he murmured nonsense about Pizza Express and the inability to sweat.
Read more – The Crown season 5 review: Netflix’s once-regal show loses all objectivity in worst season ever
The movie’s overall efficiency also makes you ignore the fact that what the BBC had was in no way an actual ‘scoop’ at all. All the information that Maitlis confronted Andrew with was already in the public domain. Martin and his writers — Peter Moffat and Geoff Bussetil — do the right thing by including a scene in which the ethics of the interview are called into question. Is platforming Andrew (for ratings) any different from Andrew being photographed ages ago with Epstein? It’s moments like this that temper other scenes — particularly that victory lap of a finale — that push Scoop dangerously close to being BBC propaganda. The monarchy isn’t the only decaying organisation shown in the film — the venerable broadcaster had its own existential challenges to deal with.
Scoop is a fine companion piece to recent journalism movies set in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, movies like the excellent procedural She Said and the more populist Bombshell. Each of these films upholds a certain old-fashioned image of news reporting, one built on honour and truth, but Scoop is the only one that admits doing the right thing and making money aren’t always exclusive.
Scoop
Director – Philip Martin
Cast – Gillian Anderson, Billie Piper, Keeley Hawes, Rufus Sewell, Romola Garai
Rating – 4/5
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