A Very English Scandal

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1. #001

   During an interview on NPR's Weekend Edition on Saturday, interviewer Scott Simon told Hugh Grant that he and Ben Whishaw had worked together on Paddington 2 (2017) before making this production, and Grant replied: "I mean, it's very strange to have spent the last three years trying to either kill Ben Whishaw or have sex with him."

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2. #002

   On the advice of director Stephen Frears, Ben Whishaw met the real Norman Scott during production and heard his account of the events.

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3. #003

   Jeremy Thorpe died in 2014. For legal reasons, the series could not have been made while he was alive. Given that Thorpe was acquitted at trial and never openly admitted his homosexuality, he could have sued for libel over being portrayed as the man behind the murder plot.

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4. #004

   According to the creative team behind this miniseries, the book it is based on has an irreverent, eccentric tone that everyone, including screenwriter Russell T. Davies, wanted to preserve for television. Davies loved the humour, but he also wanted to draw viewers into the characters' lives by including the tragic elements of the real-life story and foregrounding the genuine love between Jeremy and Norman.

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5. #005

   Hugh Grant said that eighty percent of his performance was hair and makeup, referring to the transformative work of hair and makeup designer Daniel Phillips, with whom he had previously worked on Florence Foster Jenkins (2016). Grant actively lost weight over months of intense outdoor cycling to achieve Jeremy Thorpe's distinctive gaunt look. He owes the rest of his physical transformation to Thorpe to the use of brown contact lenses, Phillips's hair and makeup design, and designer Suzanne Cave's costumes.

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6. #006

   According to series screenwriter Russell T. Davies, when the production company Blueprint Pictures sent him John Preston's book as a way of persuading him to write a television adaptation, he knew within about three pages that he would agree to join the project.

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7. #007

   The development team behind this miniseries had to verify the potentially controversial details they hoped to include in the scripts by finding several original sources to support them. The key details depicted in the series — especially those directly related to the chain of events that caused the scandal — are in fact well grounded.

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8. #008

   In his review of the series on The Wright Stuff (2000), leading television critic Kevin O'Sullivan judged Hugh Grant's performance to be one of the best of his 30-year film career and uncannily close to the real Jeremy Thorpe. He predicted that Grant would win a major acting award; however, despite numerous nominations, he won none.

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9. #009

   According to Russell T. Davies, he felt it was important that he be the one responsible for adapting Jeremy Thorpe's story for television, partly because, as a gay man, he could bring unique insights to the project that would serve to humanise the characters.

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10. #010

    In a dinner scene, Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, the Labour MP for Bristol South East better known as "Tony Benn", is mentioned. Thorpe notes that he knew him from their university days at Oxford. Thorpe's mother describes him as a "Trot", while Thorpe calls him "a charming man". Benn was seen as being on the far left of the Labour Party and was a prominent advocate of democratic socialism. In the 1970s, while Labour was in government, some sections of the British press described him as the most dangerous man in Britain; here Benn served as Secretary of State for Industry (1974-75) and later as Secretary of State for Energy (1975-79) under the prime ministerships of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. In real life, Benn died nine months before Jeremy Thorpe.

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11. #011

    This is the third time Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw have worked together. The first was Cloud Atlas (2012) and the second was Paddington 2 (2017).

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12. #012

    In Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), the nickname Hugh Grant gives to Meryl Streep is also "Bunny".

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13. #013

    This miniseries appears to accept that Jeremy Thorpe was guilty as charged and that he in fact connived at the murder of his former lover. It should be said that he was acquitted of that charge, that no other evidence demonstrating conclusive guilt has been found, that he strongly maintained his innocence until his death in 2014, and that the script of this television account is largely based on the controversial witness-box testimony of Peter Bessell, a highly dubious character whom the police were investigating over a whole series of other matters entirely unrelated to this case.

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14. #014

    In an interesting coincidence, Jeremy Thorpe's second wife, Marion, Countess of Harewood, mentions Benjamin Britten, a long-standing close friend of hers. Britten died on 4 December 1976, 38 years before her husband Thorpe died on 4 December 2014.

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