<em>A Very English Scandal</em> Revisits an Affair That’s Stranger Than Fiction<em> </em>
The Amazon miniseries starring Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw is based on a real-life moment in British politics that gripped the tabloids in the late 1970s.
As the title suggests, A Very English Scandal is riddled with symptoms and symbols of the British Establishment. The three-part miniseries has dogs. It has monocle-sporting aristocrats and long lunches at the Carlton Club. It has grown men referring to each other affectionately as “bunny.” And, most prominently, it has the central storyline of an ambitious, Eton-educated, closeted politician conspiring to have his ex-lover murdered by a squad of amateur hit men, in an assassination plot so farcical it involves nipple tassels, whipped cream, and the sitcom Dad’s Army.
Truth is stranger,
