Before she could start shooting A Very British Scandal, director Anne Sewitsky found herself playing armchair journalist. She needed to verify that Ian Campbell (played by Paul Bettany), the 20th-century Scottish duke with a cruel streak, broke into his wife’s property and stole her diary during their torrid tit-for-tat divorce proceedings—one of many fact-checking missions that she and writer Sarah Phelps initiated to ensure the BBC miniseries hewed as closely to the truth as possible. They learned that Campbell did in fact burgle his wife, socialite Margaret Whigham (Claire Foy), who herself committed forgery and alleged that Campbell’s two sons were illegitimate.
For Sewitsky, whose previous directing credits include otherworldly shows like Black Mirror and Castle Rock, this breadth of research was relatively unprecedented. But it’s essential in a pop-culture world addicted to the scams, scandals, and other larger-than-life crimes that continue to raise questions about ethics within tech, showbiz, and media.
Many people outside the United Kingdom aren’t intimately familiar with the Campbells’ unhappy marriage, which lasted from 1951 to 1963 and resulted in a media frenzy that worked overtime to shame Margaret for cheating on Ian, but A Very British Scandal (debuting April 22 on Amazon) marks the latest addition to a wave of scripted entertainment ripped from widely dissected headlines. “We are a notoriously prurient species,” Phelps tells Town & Country. “We love the thrill of picking over other people’s lives, especially when they’re rich and famous. We love to see them broken.”
The show, a follow-up to 2018’s A Very English Scandal, dips farther into history than most of its TV counterparts. The Dropout (now streaming on Hulu) chronicles the Shakespearean undoing of former tech wunderkind Elizabeth Homes (Amanda Seyfried), who convinced an alarming number of high-powered investors to believe in her phony blood-testing startup. The Girl from Plainville (also on Hulu) portrays the much-scrutinized saga involving a Massachusetts teenager (Elle Fanning) who encouraged her boyfriend’s suicide plans. Pam & Tommy (Hulu again) revisits the stolen sex tape that damaged the careers of Pamela Anderson (Lily James) and Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan). Netflix’s Inventing Anna turns its attention to an enigmatic Russian grifter (Julia Garner) who fleeced New York City hotels, banks, and art collectors in the 2010s. Over on Peacock, Joe vs. Carole dramatizes antiheroes Joe Exotic (John Cameron Mitchell) and Carole Baskin (Kate McKinnon) two years after Tiger King became a documentary phenomenon. Meanwhile, AppleTV+ has a series about overzealous WeWork power couple Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) and Rebekah Neumann (Anne Hathaway), and the Showtime business-scandal anthology Super Pumped debuted with a season about disgraced Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
From their creators’ perspectives, the fact that these shows are debuting around the same time is coincidence. But there are several explanations for the trend. Much of this content has been adapted from recent podcasts, books, magazine articles, or docuseries already devoured by a rubbernecking public at a time when Hollywood favors pre-existing intellectual property over original material. As WeCrashed co-creator Lee Eisenberg points out, it lends itself to a classic rise-and-fall narrative structure. It also aligns with broader discourse about societal malfeasance, particularly within the tech and showbiz industries. The contours of social media have trained us to find comfort in others’ failure, and the intensity of our 24/7 news-and-meme cycle means that entertainers, executives, and animal-park miscreants alike can take on mythical, oft-misunderstood prominence, practically overnight.
“The truth has become slippery,” says The Dropout showrunner Liz Meriwether. “We’re sort of left to try to piece together what’s real. I think there’s a sense that you’re constantly being potentially scammed. That anxiety leads to people wanting to see stories about people who got fooled because we all know that we're about to get fooled.”
In the 1980s, ‘90s, and 2000s, these stories often developed into forgettable made-for-television movies airing on HBO, TNT, or broadcast networks. Their production quality left something—or a lot—to be desired, even when they recruited well-known stars. The psychological nuance those prime-time projects didn’t fully capture can be better achieved in the form of, say, an eight-episode arc on a streaming series unbeholden to traditional TV constraints.
Lest anyone assume a scripted imitation can provide the final word on a real-life subject who is fundamentally unknowable to the gawkers witnessing his or her decline, these shows are grappling transparently with the Trumpian slipperiness to which Meriwether refers. A Very British Scandal, for example, opens with a prescript acknowledging that “some elements have been created or changed for dramatic purposes.” Inventing Anna’s introductory sequences contain a cheeky disclaimer alluding to the elaborate lies its protagonist told in hopes of gaining clout: “This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up.”
Liz Hannah, a Golden Globe-nominated screenwriter who spearheaded The Girl from Plainville and wrote for The Dropout, believes scandal-based adaptations can achieve a subtlety that most news coverage cannot. “Something we’ve seen a lot in the past few years is vilification in the media, a one-sided bias of ‘they’re evil,” she says of Holmes and Plainville’s Michelle Carter. “In Michelle Carter’s case, it’s, ‘She’s a black widow, she’s the villain.’ There’s a lack of global perspective and a lack of empathy. That doesn’t mean you’re removing guilt; you’re just approaching them without judgment.”
But will audiences grow tired of relitigating the recent past, of seeing judgment-free accounts of narcissism gone awry? New spectacles worth fictionalizing will arise, but when the current wave crests, could giving those stories the glossy TV treatment come to feel like a hackneyed way to address serious matters?
One thing A Very British Scandal has going for it that some others don’t is hindsight. Whereas The Dropout started shooting before Holmes’ fraud trial had even begun, Scandal uses 1960s Britain to contemplate the still-resonant effects of mass media and misogyny. Starz’s forthcoming Gaslit, which lured Julia Roberts for the juicy role of Martha Mitchell, the Republican socialite turned Watergate whistleblower, boasts a similar mid-century vantage point. So does Candy, Hulu’s Jessica Biel vehicle about Candy Montgomery, a suburban Texas housewife who in 1980 murdered her paramour’s wife (Melanie Lynskey) with an ax. That saga was previously the centerpiece of a 1990 TV movie starring Barbara Hershey, and a Montgomery-focused HBO Max series with Elizabeth Olsen is also on tap this year.
“The audience may have a dim memory of a scandal, so it’s not about giving perspective for the characters or what happened to them or what they made happen,” Phelps says. “I think it’s about us understanding something about ourselves, our culture, why we devour everything written about it, snigger at the photos, opine endlessly and often puritanically about the people involved, how we revel and delight in public shaming, and how we forget that caught at the center of this are entirely breakable human beings."
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io
"TV" - Google News
April 22, 2022 at 08:00PM
https://ift.tt/enfcj40
Will TV Ever Run Out of Scandals? - TV Shows About Scandals Trend 2022 - - Town & Country
"TV" - Google News
https://ift.tt/pHR1oax
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Will TV Ever Run Out of Scandals? - TV Shows About Scandals Trend 2022 - - Town & Country"
Post a Comment