The friends of Jeremy Thorpe
Jun. 14th, 2018 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustBack from holiday, we watched over three consecutive evenings the three episodes of A Very English Scandal that we had missed while we were away. The title doesn't make much sense to me: I'd expect a 'very English' scandal to involve sedate impropriety among the teacups (and probably to have a financial aspect, too). Guns, shooting and unkindness to dogs aren't, in that sense, terribly English (although the sheer incompetence of the conspiracy probably is). Scandal as farce, motivated by fear of exposure? That would be very English, but it doesn't quite describe the situation: Thorpe's behaviour suggests that the flirtation with discovery adds a certain frisson to his affair, right up to the point where he comes too close to the edge, and falls into tragedy.
Not that this account plays the story as tragedy: the sharp one-liners, the constant jaunty music, everything tells us we are dealing with comedy, albeit a very comedy. Nobody dies (except Rinka), and the closing what happened next? sequence shows Norman Scott still alive, still surrounded by dogs, still without a National Insurance card.
Which was all very entertaining. We wouldn't have watched it quite so fast if we hadn't been enjoying it, though this treatment may not have done it any favours. It would have been a fine once-a-week treat to round off the weekend, but three successive evenings of comedy may have been too much for my palate: blame my perpetual difficulties with comedy. It's not that I don't like it, just that I always want more.
Perhaps that's why I felt a bit let down by the last episode. This may have been inevitable: the resolution is rarely as satisfying as the set-up ("the coffee never tastes as good as it smells," saysdesperance). Of course, I knew all along how it ended, as was surely intended (A Very English Scandal would be a good example to look at when thinking about spoilers, what they are and when they matter). The reminder at the opening of each episode "Based on a true story" understates the effort it makes to persuade the viewer of its fidelity to the facts of the case. And not just in the careful dates and locations attached to events. I was immensely impressed by the physical likenesses to historical personages, not just the main characters but walk-on parts (when Jeremy Thorpe is shown talking to the Lord Chancellor, I recognised Quintin Hogg at once). Private conversations must surely have been invented, but from the mouths of these likenesses they were convincing.
Hugh Grant's Jeremy Thorpe was a tremendous performance. Yet - and perhaps this was the reveal I was subconsciously hoping for, and which never came - the character never quite made sense. I felt as if I were watching some Shakespearian anti-hero (I'd like to see Hugh Grant's Richard III) with all the great speeches and bravura moments, all the inconsistencies and non sequiturs which cause me to struggle with Shakespeare. Thorpe getting a thrill from taking his boyfriend to his mother's house I can understand, but his numerous compromising letters not so much. (It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone at any point to burn those letters: what did Peter Bessell think he was doing leaving them to be discovered at some time in the future?) Thorpe striding around demanding "Will no-one rid me of this meddlesome beast?" I can understand, but actually expecting that the 'friends' to whom he entrusted the task were suited to carrying it out, seriously? The drama also plays up a contrast by selecting moments in the House of Commons where Thorpe takes a strongly ethical line (and this is presumably a matter of record, though it's not what I remember of him!) to stand against his unscrupulous ambition.
In the end what stays with me is the portrait of Thorpe as a man without friends. He has political rivals, and he has people who can be useful to him. His courtroom repudiation of David Holmes is particularly cruel. But the only person we never see him abandon is Peter Bessell, and in the end it is Bessell who declines to protect Thorpe. Ironically, it may also be Bessell who, by making a deal whereby the fee for his story was increased if Thorpe was convicted, secured his acquittal.
Not that this account plays the story as tragedy: the sharp one-liners, the constant jaunty music, everything tells us we are dealing with comedy, albeit a very comedy. Nobody dies (except Rinka), and the closing what happened next? sequence shows Norman Scott still alive, still surrounded by dogs, still without a National Insurance card.
Which was all very entertaining. We wouldn't have watched it quite so fast if we hadn't been enjoying it, though this treatment may not have done it any favours. It would have been a fine once-a-week treat to round off the weekend, but three successive evenings of comedy may have been too much for my palate: blame my perpetual difficulties with comedy. It's not that I don't like it, just that I always want more.
Perhaps that's why I felt a bit let down by the last episode. This may have been inevitable: the resolution is rarely as satisfying as the set-up ("the coffee never tastes as good as it smells," says
desperance). Of course, I knew all along how it ended, as was surely intended (A Very English Scandal would be a good example to look at when thinking about spoilers, what they are and when they matter). The reminder at the opening of each episode "Based on a true story" understates the effort it makes to persuade the viewer of its fidelity to the facts of the case. And not just in the careful dates and locations attached to events. I was immensely impressed by the physical likenesses to historical personages, not just the main characters but walk-on parts (when Jeremy Thorpe is shown talking to the Lord Chancellor, I recognised Quintin Hogg at once). Private conversations must surely have been invented, but from the mouths of these likenesses they were convincing.Hugh Grant's Jeremy Thorpe was a tremendous performance. Yet - and perhaps this was the reveal I was subconsciously hoping for, and which never came - the character never quite made sense. I felt as if I were watching some Shakespearian anti-hero (I'd like to see Hugh Grant's Richard III) with all the great speeches and bravura moments, all the inconsistencies and non sequiturs which cause me to struggle with Shakespeare. Thorpe getting a thrill from taking his boyfriend to his mother's house I can understand, but his numerous compromising letters not so much. (It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone at any point to burn those letters: what did Peter Bessell think he was doing leaving them to be discovered at some time in the future?) Thorpe striding around demanding "Will no-one rid me of this meddlesome beast?" I can understand, but actually expecting that the 'friends' to whom he entrusted the task were suited to carrying it out, seriously? The drama also plays up a contrast by selecting moments in the House of Commons where Thorpe takes a strongly ethical line (and this is presumably a matter of record, though it's not what I remember of him!) to stand against his unscrupulous ambition.
In the end what stays with me is the portrait of Thorpe as a man without friends. He has political rivals, and he has people who can be useful to him. His courtroom repudiation of David Holmes is particularly cruel. But the only person we never see him abandon is Peter Bessell, and in the end it is Bessell who declines to protect Thorpe. Ironically, it may also be Bessell who, by making a deal whereby the fee for his story was increased if Thorpe was convicted, secured his acquittal.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-14 05:35 pm (UTC)Do the other people in the story feel more three-dimensional to you, or do they also feel like characters from Shakespeare?
no subject
Date: 2018-06-14 07:50 pm (UTC)Well, Thorpe is far and away the biggest part. Only Scott comes close. And he is constantly changing, but you can see why: the instability is who he is. (Also, I had to check his age: either he was very immature, or they played him younger than he was).
The smaller parts were reasonably three-dimensional, though it may just be that we didn't spend long enough with them to expect more depth than we got. Bessell, perhaps? There were points eith him where I felt that's a bit compressed!, but never the total WTF that I felt with Thorpe.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-17 05:34 pm (UTC)It was also quite clear that the police would conveniently ignore these sorts of criminal acts when committed by MPs. So exactly why he decided that killing Scott was a better course than sorting out his NI number is not clear. It may be that he had the sort of pathology that made him unable to think of Scott as a person, but I hope that wasn't the case. It may simply be that he felt driven to desperate measures because Scott was constitutionally unable to keep his mouth shut.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-18 08:19 am (UTC)One could, and Russell T. pretty much did.
...his sexuality meant he was continually committing criminal acts.
And people were prosecuted and imprisoned for this - but, as you say, being an MP gave him a lot of immunity. I thought about Tom Driberg, and how much the press clearly knew about him, but weren't going to mention until he died.
True, Norman Scott was exceptional - but Thorpe chose him, not just as an available short-term fling but for a long-term relationship of whatever kind. And although he was given to spilling the beans to all and sundry, no-one actually listened to him until there was a dead dog in the story.
There is nothing as mysterious as other people.