The Netflix film Scoop has finally arrived on the streaming service today (Friday, April 5) which offers up a dramatisation of how the team at Newsnight secured their infamous interview with Prince Andrew back in 2019.

The interview shook the world which saw Andrew respond to questions on his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as well as allegations of sexual assault against Virginia Giuffre when she was just a minor.

It is adapted from the book by former Newsnight guest booker Sam McAlister called Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC's Most Shocking Interviews with Billie Piper portraying McAlister in the film.

She leads a well-rounded cast, featuring the likes of Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis, Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew and Keely Hawes as Andrew's private secretary Amanda Thirsk.

Whilst the cast undoubtedly does a stellar job with the material, unfortunately, the production is rather dry and lacking in narrative stakes.

Scoop is a dry but competent production

The main level of interest for Scoop is to see the story of how Newsnight secured the interview with Prince Andrew, and the film is keen to highlight the importance of the work investigative journalists do.

After an opening showing how a paparazzi photographer got the shot of Andrew walking with Jeffrey Epstein, the film chooses to focus on the BBC announcing they are cutting hundreds of jobs.

Following that, we're thrown into the behind-the-scenes of Newsnight with McAlister as she starts to pull on the threads that will eventually lead to her dogged pursuit of the infamous interview.

She does this whilst coming into conflict with several of her colleagues on the team, and there's some interest gained from how she interacts with the press and communications teams of Buckingham Palace.

However, despite these small moments of tension, there is unfortunately very little in terms of narrative stakes.

There's no doubt that the team will get the interview and get the upper hand over Andrew after a certain point and it doesn't make for the most engaging viewing.

Obviously, because this is based on real events you know it's all going to work out, but it is possible to create some superb conflict despite this.

For instance, the 2008 film Frost/Nixon provides an effective example of this with David Frost and his team trying to get a confession out of Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal.

Whilst we know they're eventually going to succeed in the interviews there is considerable dramatic tension created out of the possibility of their failure.

Obviously, the subject matter behind the interviews is completely different in nature, but this is where Scoop's biggest failing comes into play.

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Scoop still tells an important story

Despite my misgivings about how the narrative progresses, the film is still an important one to take in for those perhaps not as familiar with all the ins and outs of the story.

Also, with the film only being about one hour and 35 minutes long without credits, it won't take up too much of your time and does manage to compress the key elements in a relatively short space of time quite effectively.

The main centrepiece of the interview with Andrew is also brought to life very well, with it hitting on the main points that brought mockery to the prince.

As mentioned earlier the acting from everyone involved is great, with Piper especially giving a lot of nuance to a quite determined individual.

Scoop is available to watch on Netflix now.