Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Sophie Cookson, James Norton, Ellie Bamber, Emilia Fox, Ben Miles, Sam Troughton, Anthony Welsh, Jack Greenlees, Chloe Harris, Rosalind Halstead, Anton Lesser, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Sam Crane, Amanda Drew, Michael Maloney, Charlene Boyd, Aiden McCardle, Tim McInnerny, Danny Webb, Paul Ryan, Visar Vishka, Peter Davison, Alex Macqueen, Neil Morrisey, Danny Webb.
The whole world, in some respects, is based on the hypocritical ideal of appearances, we are all to be found guilty of such notions, damning anyone who dare be different, and we seem to be caught up in a system that demands the truth whilst the individual asks for privacy when caught out in their lie, and the bigger the personality, the higher up the ladder they are perceived to be, the more those words are highlighted, used as a bludgeoning tool to keep certain people in their place.
When you are the chosen sacrifice of the so called grandees of society, you can either take it and see your name besmirched from dusk till dawn and the fallout that that inevitably comes, or you can fight back, claw at the faces, punch them in the system they seem to desire to keep in place.
For some though the system and its perpetual silent tyranny is too much, it cannot be fought against, and for the likes of Christine Keeler, for Stephen Ward, sex as a weapon, for being involved with the wrong people, it could be argued that the thin veneer of what passed for morals in Britain after World War Two, was seen for what it was, hypocritical, two-faced, false, a lie, and as such the walls of Jericho could also be found to tumbling, crashing to the ground around the circus of Westminster and beyond.
If you were asked to describe Christine Keeler in one word, for the majority of people in the country, even after 60 years, the result would be particularly unpleasant, certainly rude, and one seared through the broadcast media and Government circles as damning; and yet for her, Mandy Rice-Davies and Stephen Ward, it also meant scapegoat, the long held tradition of finding a patsy who will take the fall so that others don’t have too.
So much gossip and whole forests destroyed to make the Profumo Affair a lasting legacy of the ‘60s, the words pimp, immoral earnings and prostitute all making their way into the everyday language of the populace as they discussed with relish the fine details of how it seemed one young woman was able to bring a Government to its knees. However, there is so much more to this so called sordid tale, and as The Trial of Christine Keeler was very much at pains to show, it is the life of the those deemed and decried as playthings for the rich and famous that end up paying the heaviest price.
The affair between the then Minister for War and the naive girl has been called a scandal, one in which Stephen Ward paid for with his life but surely the true humiliation is one that has been played on the 99 percent of the country, those who were titillated by the exposure of a Government minister and who have handed down the lie and kept the façade of respectability up ever since.
The Trial of Christine Keeler captures this and the events surrounding the affair with indignity running through its veins, and with excellent performances by Sophie Cookson as Christine Keeler, James Norton as Stephen Ward, Ben Miles as John Profumo, the exceptional Sam Troughton as D.S. John Burrows and Anthony Welsh as Aloysius ‘Lucky’ Gordon, this version of events is eye-catching, near the knuckle and arguably one that understands the price of the masses can always be bought by the lure of a story and a bundle of cash.
Lurid, shocking, brilliant, The Trial of Christine Keeler is the moment where hopefully eyes are opened fully to just how far the Establishment will go to keep themselves in power.
Ian D. Hall
