‘A Very British Scandal’ Review: Paul Bettany & Claire Foy Battle It Out As A Divorcing Duke & Duchess

At this point, we’ve all probably seen enough TV shows and movies to convince us that marriage isn’t for everyone. That’s made especially clear in historical works, which often serve to remind viewers that, not that many years ago, marriage was an obligation and occasionally a nightmare. 

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That’s certainly the case in Amazon Prime Video’s new limited series “A Very British Scandal,” which will air on the BBC in the UK. Focusing on the tumultuous and brutal marriage and mid-century divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, the show uses both contemporary newspaper clips and scripted scenes to craft the story of this truly cursed couple. 

Claire Foy plays Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll, who, before her 1951 marriage to the Duke, became famous for her beauty, style, and access to her father’s wealth. She ran with a fast crowd and is, as she says in the show, both very good at sex and very interested in having lots of it. It’s unclear how many men she’s been with prior to the Duke—she was married at least once before—but we’re meant to believe it’s a lot. 

Paul Bettany stars as Ian Campbell, a twice-married war hero who meets Margaret on the train and begins to woo her despite still being married to the mother of two of his children. He subsequently finds himself thrown into a Scottish dukedom after the death of a cousin, and—though it’s unclear at the time—decides to throw off his wife and get with Margaret in an effort to use her funds to restore his dank and decrepit old castle. 

Though everything in the pair’s marriage seems hunky dory out of the gate, things go quickly awry after a public “carrying the bride over the threshold” incident, and Margaret is forced to reckon with the realities of being both a living, breathing pocketbook and a very lonely wife stuck in a castle hundreds of miles away from her friends in London. She throws all her effort into the castle, only to be reminded cruelly by her husband that she’ll have no claim to it once he’s gone, as it will go to his oldest son and, by default, his second wife. 

Over the course of three one-hour episodes, the Duke and Duchess unfurl unspeakable cruelties at each other. Margaret tries to convince the Duke his sons aren’t his. The Duke often gets so drunk he embarrasses Margaret in public. He’s also apparently on amphetamines, which, coupled with his unhinged rage and potential PTSD, result in him trying to choke the duchess to death. There are affairs, swindles, and nasty exchanges, and ultimately the Duke files for divorce after stumbling across some photos taken en flagrante by Margaret. 

Unfortunately, the legal battle between the Argylls is limited to the very end of the show’s third episode, and that’s a shame, since it could be some of the series’ most compelling material. Foy’s Margaret is pained and persecuted by both the judge, who’s friendly to her husband, and the merciless British press, but we see precious little of that. In both the show and in real life, Margaret was always tight-lipped about who the man in the photos was and what some of the notations in her personal diary meant, and the show does little to suggest what it thinks the truth may be. That could be out of respect for the duchess—she certainly deserves it, even though she also did awful things—but it means the show end on a bit of a whimper. The Duke is granted a divorce, Margaret has to pay up, and ultimately is forced to live in a sad, shameful obscurity until her death 30-odd years later. The Duke, of course, marries an American heiress almost immediately. 

Fans of historical limited series will probably find at least something to like in “A Very British Scandal,” but that’s mainly because it doesn’t really break any new ground. It’s well shot, well-acted, and Scotland looks lovely, but the show doesn’t really tell us anything about life in ‘50s and ‘60s Britain that we couldn’t have already guessed. The Argylls’ duel has the potential to be salacious, and it surely was at the time, but now it’s more sad than anything. While the show clearly aims to lift up Margaret in absentia, instead it just makes viewers feel pretty disgusted by the whole affair. [C]