Netflix’s Anatomy of a Scandal examines sex, consent, privilege and entitlement

If you’re looking for escapism, Netflix’s new miniseries may not be it. It evokes the many scandals of recent years – to the point of triggering.

If only the story of a high-profile politician caught having an affair with a staffer was novel.

But we know from both fiction and nonfiction that it very much happens – and even in this current Australian election campaign, these real-life examples are never far from the headlines.

There are several plot points in Netflix miniseries Anatomy of a Scandal that evokes the many ignominies that have plagued the Morrison Government during this term, from matters of sexual assault and consent to examining privilege and toxic environments.

Watching certain scenes in the series triggers infuriating memories of actual press conferences. Some of that dialogue, such as words spoken by the fictional on-screen PM, comes from the same political playbook of deflection and defiance.

So be warned, because as much as Anatomy of a Scandal has a bingeworthy and propulsive essence, it’s not exactly escapist TV.

Anatomy of a Scandal is streaming now on Netflix. Picture: Ana Cristina Blumenkron/Netflix

The series is adapted from a best-selling book by former court reporter Sarah Vaughan, who based her story on two UK sex scandals, one involving then-frontbencher and now PM Boris Johnson and another that embroiled a footballer.

But Vaughan’s inspirations, the specificities of those two cases, only highlight how pervasive this behaviour is, and that’s what’s interesting about this streaming adaptation. As much as the show trips over some of the nuances or overplays dramatic flourishes, there is an urgency to its storytelling that makes it more compelling than not.

Of course, it never hurts to have a lead cast – Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery and Rupert Friend – that knows exactly how to hold the camera’s attention.

The series starts with well-known Tory MP James Whitehouse (Friend) confessing to his wife Sophie (Miller) that he had an affair with a researcher on his staff, Olivia (Naomi Scott). James is only telling her because the story is about to break in the press.

Sienna Miller as politician’s wife Sophie. Picture: Ana Cristina Blumenkron/Netflix

Sophie is the ideal political wife: She’s polished and composed, and she’s standing by her husband. Her pain is only apparent when Miller snatches moments away from other characters to go behind Sophie’s veneer of stoicism, drawing on a rawness that may be from her own lived, made-public experiences.

But what appears, at first, to be a sadly common, run-of-the-mill sex scandal soon morphs into something bigger when Olivia accuses James of rape.

Anatomy of a Scandal’s writers Melissa James Gibson (The Americans, House of Cards) and David E. Kelley (The Practice, Big Little Lies) make the choice in portraying James as truly believing he’s not guilty of what he stands accused, steadfast in his faith that he is a good person because that’s what he’s been told his whole life.

It’s in that conundrum that Anatomy of a Scandal is its most effective, the examination of a privileged man who believes that whatever he did can’t have been wrong because every social, personal and structural influence from birth has reinforced his consequence-free world view.

Key to it is the series’ flashbacks to when James and Sophie met at Oxford, where he was a member of the Libertines, a fictional supper club based on the real-life all-male bastion of elitism which counted David Cameron and Boris Johnson as members.

These hazy flashbacks establish privilege and entitlement as the pernicious force that sweeps aside the dignity and humanity of everyone else.

Michelle Dockery in Anatomy of a Scandal. Picture: Ana Cristina Blumenkron/Netflix

Kelley is a veteran when it comes to courtroom scenes so there is a dynamism to the many sequences set within the panelled room as James and Olivia each tell their sides of the story, including to prosecuting QC Kate Woodcroft (Dockery) and defence counsel Angela Regan (Josette Simon).

These interrogations are interspersed with flashbacks to an encounter between James and Olivia in a lift, which along with other depictions of he-said-she-said moments highlight the show’s desire to present the murkiness of fact and faith.

It’s pretty clear by the end of the six episodes who is telling the actual truth versus their truth, even if the path there is sometimes clumsy or half-baked. And ultimately, Sophie, despite being the main character, is underserviced despite Miller’s best efforts.

But for all its flaws, Anatomy of a Scandal is a more-ish streaming show that at least has a curiosity about the equally flawed world in which we live.

Anatomy of a Scandal is streaming now on Netflix