Scoop; A Life in Ten Pictures

“For all the sensation their interview would cause, this re-enactment grips consistently as a revolving study in personalities. It’s no laughing matter, obviously, but aspects of the whole saga are still inescapably absurd, and maximally milked in a borderline-The-Thick-of-It fashion without going overboard. The director, Philip Martin, plays everything right to the cusp – where you clamp hand to mouth, aghast at remembering that this trainwreck actually happened, and irresistibly compelled to relive it.”
Tim Robey, The Telegraph

“There was a lot to enjoy in this broad cosplay of British media, for all its flaws. Certainly, nobody disgraced themselves. By the end, though, both it and its characters seemed to be judging success on the basis of approval; on mass Twitter feedback and global press attention. Is that enough? Does it even warrant a drama in the first place?”
Hugo Rifkind, The Times

“I would rather hear the real Maitlis spit the words ‘he was a sex offender’ when Andrew tries to pass off Epstein as simply ‘unbecoming’, and I would rather hear the real Andrew dig himself into holes about Pizza Express, shooting parties and an alleged inability to sweat. It is to Scoop’s credit that despite these issues, it is still, in parts, gripping. There is a certain thrill in being party to Palace press politics, in seeing BBC staff at each other’s throats, and in watching people make fateful decisions of which we already know the consequences.”
Emily Bootle, The i

“Scoop positions the interview as one of the most crucial journalistic works of recent history. But this is a film that is uncomfortably smug about a hollow victory. It fails to make the argument for why any of this mattered beyond making good TV.”
Clarisse Loughrey, The Independent

“The drama is smothered by its own overwhelming sense of importance.”
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“The problem with trying to tell the life story of Robin Williams in ten photos is that the vehicle is too slight for the subject. Just as a previous episode devoted to Carrie Fisher showed, characters as huge and sparkling as these expose the limitations of the format. While the concept is perfectly sound, I didn’t feel from the ten images chosen that we had got a fully rounded sense of the man, this complicated, driven, dynamic one-off comic genius whose life ended by suicide in 2014.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“This affectionate and sometimes sentimental biography showed us Williams in all his glorious nascent talent. We saw him in his element, entertaining troops in Afghanistan, but also in the depths of despair.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail