The Trial Of Christine Keeler, BBC One, Sunday and Monday
Sex, class, racism, power, spies, exploitation, social mobility, gender inequality, media intrusion – the Profumo Affair had it all. In 1963 it provoked a tabloid frenzy and helped bring an end of the age of deference. Today the same story would break the internet, as the saying goes.
Thirty years ago Michael Caton-Jones’s film Scandal cast Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler and John Hurt as Stephen Ward, the society osteopath who introduces her to fast-rising Tory Minister John Profumo. Financed by an enthusiastic Harvey Weinstein, it had a strong political and anti-Establishment intent – so strong that the BBC chickened out of backing it as a mini-series, writer Michael Thomas’s preferred vehicle.
Three decades on – post-Weinstein, post-Epstein and post-truth – this re-telling by Amanda Coe has shifted the focus from Profumo and Ward to Keeler herself, fleshing out episodes from her earlier life and putting her at the centre of the drama. She even narrates, after a fashion. So this time the story concentrates on the personal as much as the political. Another less obvious difference between the versions of 1989 and 2019: Whalley was a state-school educated northerner whereas Sophie Cookson (Keeler) and Ellie Bamber (Mandy Rice-Davies) are both products of southern English public schools. So much for the 1960s dream of social mobility.
Elsewhere Ben Miles makes an unctuous and slightly reptilian John Profumo and Emilia Fox plays his starry wife Valerie Hobson as ice-cold, steely and detached, a woman who knows when to look the other way. Oddly, given the show’s focus on the distaff side, the star turn in last week’s opening two episodes went to James Norton as Stephen Ward. Cigarette in one hand, glass of whisky in the other, he was perfectly cast as the complex, tragic and oddly sexless society fixer whose policy of social triangulation brought him into contact with Russian embassy officials, Lords, government ministers, West Indian drug dealers and attractive young women on the make. And if you wanted to, you could also view Norton’s performance as an audition to be the next James Bond. Emerging from his mews flat dressed in a tuxedo he looked made for the part.
It’s hard to argue that we were crying out for a re-examination of the Profumo Affair. Then again, as shown by the success of 2018’s A Very English Scandal and the continuing Netflix series The Crown, it’s hard to argue that late 20th century British history isn’t a rich or artistically profitable vein of content to mine, or that we aren't good at putting it on the small screen and making it look awesome. Like those two other show, The Trial Of Christine Keeler is a costume drama for people who hate costume dramas – an evergreen tale with contemporary resonances aplenty.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here