The Trial Of Christine Keeler (2019) Mini Series Review

The Trial Of Christine Keeler (2019) Mini Series Review

 This show had quite a big hype about it and I have just finished The Trial Of Christine Keeler and this is my review for this mini series. The premise of the show sees a scandal take place as a young girl is caught having an affair with the war minister and send the british government into chaos. 

Main Character

Sophie Cookson plays Christine Keeler on this show and she does a fine job, she is good at playing the seductive sexy mistress that clearly craves for power. She is a pretty strong character and you see her try and use her looks to get ahead and manipulate many different characters on this show. However, I felt like for being a lead character, I just didn't really care about her, at times she even came across as unlikeable. I get that they were going with the more femme fatale character but the show tries to make you feel sorry for her and I just didn't really.

Supporting Characters

James Norton plays Stephen Ward on this show and he is easily the best part of the show, he plays the sleezy character really well and you are just a bit disturbed by some of the things he says and does on this show. But also when the show tries to make you care about him, because of his really strong performance you actually care about him and what happens to him on this show and I expect to see more of Norton in bigger projects in the future. Ellie Bamber plays Christine's friend Mandy and she is a good companion for Christine and her story is pretty interesting and her character develops throughout the season and her motivations are revealed. Emilia Fox and Ben Miles play the Perfumo's on this show and they are the least interesting part for me, I didn't connect with either of their characters and I didn't care about their part in the show even though that is the crux of the show. 

Story

Their is some real intrigue in the story of this show, but most of it includes subplots, especially involving Stephen Ward that I cared about and the last few episodes deal with more of that and I found it interesting and the courtroom scenes really worked for me and were the most intriguing scenes in the show. The problem is that the main storyline of the scandal just isn't interesting, we live in the world where it just isn't particularly earth shaking and it isn't portrayed as that scandelous or fascinating to watch.

Script

The show has some really good dramatic dialogue that raises the intensity and drama of the scenes that these characters are in. This show is at it's best when it deals with the drama of the situations and the conspiracies that are at play on this show, but this show tries subtle humour and for me it just didn't quite work and felt a bit cheesy and just felt a bit forced.

Style

This show isn't afraid to show explicit scenes and for this shows topics it really works to not hide anything and works at its best by showing the things that are quite graphic in nature and I feel like without it his show would have been pretty boring. Though it must be said that this series does have some issues with pacing and jumps all over the place in the timeline which is really jarring, also there are certain things that weren't finished off which were pretty interesting.

Overall 

Overall, I felt like this was a very average show, this show never hits the heights that they hoped for and honestly unless you are really interested by the source material then this show is probably one to give a miss.

Rating - 5/10