Critics Have A Lot Of Thoughts About Amazon's New Prince Andrew Drama A Very Royal Scandal

Just five months after the film Scoop premiered on Netflix, Amazon has unveiled its own take on Prince Andrew’s now-infamous Newsnight interview.

While Netflix’s film largely told the story from the perspective of former Newsnight producer Sam McAlister, the three-part series A Very Royal Scandal centres around journalist Emily Mailtis, who also serves as its executive producer.

The former BBC presenter is portrayed in the new drama by Ruth Wilson, while Michael Sheen undergoes quite the transformation to play the Duke of York.

Critics have already been having their say on A Very Royal Scandal, and while they haven’t exactly been slating it, most are questioning whether there’s a need for two explorations of the same event within the space of six months – particularly for something that took place in such recent history.

Lead actors Michael and Ruth’s performances have largely been praised, but questions remain over how successfully the drama handles the thorny subject matter.

Here’s a selection of what critics have to say…

The Standard (2/5) 

“I’d crawl over harsh terrain to see Sheen and Wilson in just about anything. After AVRS I felt I had. His chameleonic power seems muted, while her attempt to capture Maitlis’s grave diction makes the broadcaster sound glutinously smug.”

The Telegraph (2/5)

“This is the second recreation of the 2019 encounter that proved so disastrous for the Duke of York, and it definitely feels like one too many. Why are we seeing this again when anyone who wants to revisit the actual interview can do so on YouTube? Who cares about the planning meetings and the editing and Maitlis worrying about what to wear?”

Financial Times (3/5)

“The main problem with both of these well-made, finely performed productions is that they miss the larger story. The collision of journalistic rigour and a near-farcical act of self-sabotage made the interview a sensation, but the serious, sinister content of that discussion is something that these dramas only superficially grapple with.”

Slate (2/5)

“A Very Royal Scandal barely scratches the surface of Andrew’s opaque relationship with Epstein, offering little more than a few brief flashbacks to the two interacting, with only passing mention made to the prince’s financial entanglement with the financier. It’s only in the last of the three episodes that the series touches on anything that could be described as revelatory.”

iNews (2/5)

“A Very Royal Scandal desperately doesn’t want you to think it’s self-congratulatory, but its very existence argues otherwise [...] The original interview was a television spectacle but its impact in the grand scheme of things was limited. For A Very Royal Scandal to be more than a flimsy footnote, it needed to tell us more than what we already knew.”

The Guardian (3/5)

“Like Maitlis, A Very Royal Scandal handles itself with comportment and class, but as a drama, it is too frictionless for its own good.”

The Independent (3/5)

“It romps along at a clip and, as its rather twee title suggests, gets a few good kicks into the British monarchy. But where the Duke of York’s 50-minute sit-down interview with Newsnight felt like it gazed into the dark recesses of power, A Very Royal Scandal only really gazes into the navel of the BBC.”

AV Club (3/5)

“While it’s a far more satisfying version of this story than the one retold in Scoop, A Very Royal Scandal may suffer from coming out second and relitigating (very recent) history. If we were all there to see the real thing unfold the first time around, then watched the movie version, is there an audience who wants more?”

The Times (4/5)

“Sheen and Wilson put in hefty, quality performances (I also loved Alex Jennings as Sir Edward Young). It feels a bit like what The Crown might have produced if it had covered this car-crash event [...] Is the series self-admiring? Yes, inevitably. But there is much to admire.”

Radio Times (3/5)

“This is probably the best dramatic version of this story we were ever going to get on screen, at least this soon after the event. Then again, if in 10 years the events are reappraised and a third iteration is made – and let’s face it, it probably will be – we can always circle back.”

A Very Royal Scandal is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.