Scoop (2024) – Philip Martin (Friday’s Finest)

I recall in my adolescent years seeing Prince Andrew, Duke of York in his naval uniform and reading about him being a hero in the Falklands war as a helicopter pilot. I couldn’t help but look up to him; he seemed the epitome of a gentlemen with an outstanding career, beautiful wife and family. How perceptions can be deceiving.

Movie Info:
The film is a behind-the-scenes story of the women who negotiated with the Buckingham Palace establishment to secure the “scoop of the decade” that was the public catalyst for the downfall of the Duke of York, in a televised interview which focused on Andrew’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of Andrew’s sexual assault of a minor. 

In the opening scenes of the new Netflix movie Scoop actress Billie Piper (image left) who plays brassy BBC Producer Sam McAlister dressed from head-to-toe in designer gear is walking up to the BBC studios with coffee in one hand and Iphone in the other. Scoop is based on Sam McAlister’s book Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews. She is the producer who secured the Prince Andrew interview.

Billy Piper’s portrayal of McAlister is one of the most fascinating performances I have seen in a long time. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Piper says of McAlister “She’s a real force of nature, she’s formidable and high energy, and I wanted to take a lot of that into my performance. She is so persistent, but there is something gracious and warm and curious, and kind of child-like about her and her love of what she does.” And by golly did Piper impart those traits in her character. That would have been no mean feat such is the complexity of getting all that right. Also, the movie does a splendid job of highlighting the juxtaposition between McAlister’s ‘very Daily Mail‘ image and the highfalutin middle-class liberal staff at BBC’s ‘Newsnight‘.

Scoop isn’t the type of film I would be pressed to watch. Public scandals and the inner workings of the Press are not high up on my list of topics which entice me. Not to mention the ‘moral exhibitionist’ and ‘virtue signalling’ BBC whom are not my favourite bunch in recent times. But I will praise them for two things: their sports page which I read everyday and their brazened efforts to expose this Royal creep for what he is. I thought this depiction of the downfall of Prince Andrew wouldn’t be anything to write home about, since we all pretty much know what went down, but where I took delight and admiration in viewing were the following aspects of Scoop:

• As aforementioned Billie Piper’s spectacular portrayal of McAlister,
• The realism of the events and all the portrayals
  (Rufus Sewell was very good in the impossible task of playing Prince Andrew but Gillian Anderson bridges that impossibility and makes that, already famous interview, totally and utterly riveting).
• The tempo, set productions and runtime. Each scene seems necessary and the movie is compact.

I’m surprised by the lukewarm reception by the public towards Scoop with a rating of just 6.7/10 on IMDB. 79% of critics’ reviews are positive. Coming into this movie, if anyone was ready to chop at a movie’s lofty attempt to reanimate a sequence of well known public events it would have been me, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Scoop. I will definitely be seeing it again in the not too distant future even if it is to watch Billie Piper grace us playing a working-class single mum who eats kebabs, travels by bus and relies on her own mother (Amanda Redman) to care for her teenage son.

I have presented below a shortened trailer for the film which doesn’t overstay its welcome as far as trailers go. If you liked the other historical drama of the famous Frost/Nixon interview, then I’d be surprised if you didn’t find Scoop intriguing. Let me know what you thought if you have seen it.

References:
1. Scoop (2024 film) – Wikipedia
2. Scoop (2024) – IMDB

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“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand