Scandalously contrived: Anatomy of a Scandal

Think white men are swines? This might be the show for you

TRYING to reconcile the absurd with reality is the modern left’s great endeavour. Maintaining that brave, stunning women athletes who are as broad shouldered as Arnold Schwarzenegger (and who are packing the same kind of tackle) should be treated the same as any other female is a case in point.

Given the left’s utter dominance throughout the entertainment and media it should not be a surprise that such tortuous mental gymnastics infect society’s cultural output. Should one be in doubt, the recently released Anatomy of a Scandal (Netflix) should be enough to convince the few remaining sceptics among us.

The show revels in its skin-deepness. All the baddies – and, by Jove, they have no redeeming features – are hewn from the same stone. They are all white, male and conservative. Caricatured baddies who blend boundless greed and manipulative arrogance, they are the sole representation of the White Man in the programme, and as we all know, White Men are bad news.

The rest of the cast? They’re good. Handily, they’re all female too, hand-picked to be somewhat ethnically diverse (I say somewhat as, as is often the case with our America-poisoned culture, the issue of skin colour on screen is purely ‘black and white’). The selfless wife whose continued support of her marriage is ruthlessly abused by her Evil White Husband. The strong female lawyers, who fight injustice and strive for truth. You get the idea. So right-on is the cast-list, that even the driver of the black cab is a woman.

Relying on a plot twist as convincing as a 17-stone former docker called Mike who’s put on a set of size 10 stilettos, the show comes quickly off the rails, exploded by its own absurdity. People who were in close contact for significant lengths of time are supposed to not recognise each other at all. Moreover, we are meant to believe an absurd series of events which took place the during the accused’s university days, the patent idiocy of which only highlights the scriptwriter’s apparent unrelenting hatred of White Men. One’s willing suspension of disbelief can only be abused so much.

Naturally, the twist was never, going to be that the White Men aren’t quite so bad as we had imagined. Never permitted nuance, the prime caucasian fiend’s dark palette of evil misdeeds only grows more menacing as the hitting-you-round-the-head series reaches its tiresomely predictable crescendo. Not only is the White Man Bad, he’s even worse than you had imagined. The only surprise is that a pig’s head fails to make an appearance.

All of this is not to say the series is not entirely without merit, touching as it does on the grey areas of sexual contact which, after the #MeToo era, threaten to engulf relations between the sexes and convince young men that bothering with women in the first place is just not worth the effort. Yet, structured as it is in its unidimensional battle of ‘good versus evil’, with each side represented by exactly you would imagine, the programme forfeits whatever explorations into the complexities of human relations it conducts by asphyxiating it in a goop of modern liberal agitprop.

Apparently the show’s writer is a former Guardian columnist. No shock there. According to her, she had to portray the evildoers as Conservatives because they are, allegedly, the ones who are guilty of all the sordid spectacles plaguing our body politick. Clearly she is afflicted by a hefty degree of willing blindness. Such an inability to see clearly would go far in explaining her clumsy, ham-fisted stab at trying to land another blow on the omnibastard White Men in her midst.

The modern left’s seamless – or rather shameless? - ability to blend together the absurd and the ridiculous and demanding you take it oh so seriously is no better displayed than in this hackneyed, right-on drivel.

Avoid, unless you hate White Men. In that case, it’s the perfect show for you to hone your prejudicial streak.