I wanted to like this. I really did, as the Profumo scandal fascinates me, however this is somthing of a mess, with a heavy relience on flashbacks, which only adds to the confusion of the plot. Even old history hacks like me will find it hard to follow & quite tedious in places. The acting is fairly good but is let down by a very weak script & the constant repetition of "Little baby" from Stephen Ward every other sentance is really nerve grating. Even in the superb 1989 film "Scandal" Ward (Sir John Hurt) only uttered the phrase once. This series also paints Christine Keeler as a victim when in reality she used her notoriety to secure various modelling jobs & enormous sums of money from newspapers for her story. If anything she was a silly little party girl who was playing with fire! So I believe this show has a feminist taint, where all men are evil, sex maniacs & all women are innocent victims of male abuse & while there were wrongs on all sides of the Profumo Affair, it certainly was not as one sided as it is painted in this series. This could have been terrific if there were no annoying flash backs, if they had a decent script writer & just told this juicy story as it is. The original story needs no added extras. Also there is no way this needed 6 episodes as just 3 would have done the job nicely.
Anyway, I am giving this a 4 stars for the acting, which is fairly good, but the structure of story telling is sadly lacking, & to be fair the actors did their best trying to work from a terrible script & awful direction. However, this is worth a watch, but to be honest here the 1989 film "Sandal" is far better in quality.
Anyway, I am giving this a 4 stars for the acting, which is fairly good, but the structure of story telling is sadly lacking, & to be fair the actors did their best trying to work from a terrible script & awful direction. However, this is worth a watch, but to be honest here the 1989 film "Sandal" is far better in quality.