HBO Max's 'The Trial of Christine Keeler' is Entertaining, But Doesn't Have Much to Say
The six-part drama The Trial of Christine Keeler was originally released in the U.K. in December of last year and is now streaming on HBO-MAX. Apparently, the intention of the all-woman production team - writer Amanda Coe (Apple Tree Yard), Director Andrea Harkin, and Producer Rebecca Ferguson - was to tell the story of the infamous 1960s scandal's female protagonist; but has anyone ever ignored the presence of Christine Keeler in the sorry story of the Profumo Affair? Inevitably, the series will be compared to Amazon Prime’s A Very English Scandal, but where that series was a jolly all-boys-together romp, The Trial of Christine Keeler is a far sadder and darker exploration of male power and female sexuality.
This is a story about the powerless, defined by race, class, education, or gender, losing out against the male, white, upper-class Establishment of Britain in the early 1960s. This period was by no means the swinging sixties. Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and his Conservative government are still in power, and a series of disjointed scenes jumping around over a few years set the stage for what happened. Meet Christine Keeler (Sophie Cookson)—young, pretty, barely educated, in search of fun in London with vague aspirations of a career as a model or an actress by way of exotic dancing. She lives with a Black boyfriend, Johnny Edgecombe (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who’s trying to find work but invariably discovers a white man got there first. Does she view the nasty comments from white passers-by when she and Johnny kiss on the street as toxic racism? More likely she just enjoys shocking the neighbors, just as she enjoys sex, Caribbean music, drugs, and nightclubs.
Enter the osteopath to the rich and famous, Dr. Stephen Ward, played brilliantly by James Norton (Grantchester), an ingratiating voyeur ascending the slippery slope of social advancement. He’s relatively posh, but not that posh, and the truly powerful make sure he’s reminded of his lower status. He is there, after all, to provide them with exclusive services, the proprietor of a sexual buffet. Netflix’s The Crown covered the Profumo Affair with a great deal of imagination (must we remind you again that series is fiction, not history?), but it’s true that Ward liked art and he did sketch various members of the Royal Family. He meets Christine at the club where she dances and promises her ... fun. And he addresses her as “Little Baby,” which is creepy in the extreme.
Christine and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies (Ellie Bamber), who we first meet as the very young mistress of slum landlord Peter Rachman (Johnny Coyne), both become intimate, although not necessarily in a sexual way, with Ward. Christine accompanies Ward to Cliveden, the posh country house of Lord Astor (Michael Malone), whose parties are infamous for sexual dalliances. It’s there that she first meets Jack Profumo (Ben Miles), Minister of War. She is, by the way, 19. Profumo, decades older, is an ambitious politician with his eye on Conservative party advancement and he’s slated to be the next Prime Minister. Miles does a splendid job of portraying steely-eyed charm and self-interest, although his relationship with his complicit, sophisticated wife Valerie (Emilia Fox) is by far more interesting than his dalliance with Christine.
Profumo’s affair with Christine lasts only a few months, and under normal circumstances would not have interested anyone except for the fact that Christine was also involved with the dashing Eugene Ivanov (Visar Vishka), a USSR Military Attache, who drops round to Ward’s apartment for poker games and more. This, remember, is the height of the Cold War. Ward, we learn, has ambitions to become involved in espionage, and broker world peace. MI-5 resents the intrusion of an upstart amateur, and keeps an eye on him and his visitors.
There is very little evidence of any security breach, but then the two sides of Christine’s life converge. She’s still seeing Johnny, but she’s stalked by a rival, Lucky Gordon (Anthony Welsh). A fight starts at a club and Jonny knifes Lucky. After that, Christine doesn't feel safe and she demands that Johnny get her a gun. She moves into Ward’s apartment, and Johnny, furious at her desertion, turns up and fires the gun outside, demanding entrance. The police are called, and Johnny is arrested.
