Anatomy of a Scandal (2022 – Season 1) Review

When MP James Whitehouse is caught up in a sexual consent scandal it will rock his world, make his wife doubt everything about their life together and British politics.

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***May Contain Spoilers***

Anatomy of a Scandal has six episodes and is quite frankly a very easy to binge watch series as you cannot wait to find out the verdict, but also what different twist or turn is going to happen next.

The manner in which each episode makes you change your opinion on the different characters make you wonder just how trials like this are able to come to a verdict as it is very much “he said” “she said” considering the lack of actual evidence. As a viewer we are taken down many different roads. To begin with we just think that James Whitehouse made a mistake and had a one off slip from his wife Sophie with Olivia Lytton who was working within his office.

As everything progresses it seems that it was actually a rather intense affair and did they actually love each other? It seems as though Olivia was in love with him but then the night she accuses him of raping her was after the affair had ended and they were then in the lift. The interesting part of the court case had to be how slight differences they had when recalling that episode in the lift. Doesn’t that really make you wonder just how you feeling something is totally different to what someone else might feel and remember.

I seriously thought that this series was going to go full MeToo and have many more women come out and accuse him of rape or assault, but that was not the case at all. It was actually more complex with that and Kate Woodcroft the the prosecuting lawyer was a little bit closer to the case altogether. She actually went by a different name in the past and was actually raped by James when at University, so certain aspects of the events in the lift were what happened to her back in her late teens.

Following how Sophie deals with it actually led to some amusing Twitter trending moments as people asked if anyone is actually physically sick when they hear something that startles them. The main answer to that was actually a big no, but it raised questions. Especially when that wasn’t the only moment that a character was physically sick after something had happened.

The development around Sophie as well thinking back to the University days and if James really is a good as a man as she thinks in her own head, not really accepting how he treats other women. The nanny/maid nailed it when she said “he’s a man” when being asked if she thought he was a good man. Then when their son Finn said Whitehouse’s always win you can see the horror that their son will end up like his father thinking that they are untouchable and can pretty much do everything they want. Their daughter Emily on the other hand seems more suspicious about what is happening with the trial.

That all being said though it is engaging enough and as I mentioned earlier something that you can easily binge and it doesn’t really take too long to do that! with 4 hours and 28 minutes of running time across the six episodes. I do always enjoy courtroom drama/scenes and this really does have plenty of those, along with different flashback moments to tell the story.

Performance wise Michelle Dockery was the standout out for me, thought she was brilliant each and every single time she appeared on screen and really drove moments forward. Sienna Miller was good as well, it actually made me think that it feels like it has been a while since I have actually seen her in anything. Rupert Friend was naturally very good as well, considering his characters development and the way he grew it really hate him!

Everything was well and truly left on a cliffhanger for a possible second series with the events that would take down the Prime Minister as well. Watch this space comes to mind!