YMMV / A Very English Scandal

• Award Snub: Despite sweeping the entire awards circuit, the Screen Actors Guild Awards snubbed Ben Whishaw, though nominated Hugh Grant in the category.^note There are no supporting categories for these awards, where Whishaw had been nominated and campaigned, whereas Grant had been campaigned in lead.
• Cry for the Devil: Thorpe reminisces over his other attempts at finding male lovers, which usually ended poorly (the lover beating him or having a moment of "gay panic", robbing him, etc.); despite every terrible thing he's done to Norman, he is vulnerable when it comes to his personal life.
• Funny Moments: After Andrew Newton is released from prison, he demands £75,000 from the first reporter he sees. When the reporter says he can offer £3000, Newton immediately says it's a deal.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At one point, Thorpe opines that even if the affair brings him down, the Liberal Party is in the safe hands of upstanding fellows like Cyril Smith and Clement Freud. Smith was infamously accused (posthumously) of multiple offences against children in care homes during the seventies, while Freud was accused (also posthumously) of multiple sexual offences against girls and young women.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ben Whishaw played Hugh Grant's lover (well, wife) in one timeline of Cloud Atlas, and Grant was the villain opposite Whishaw's Paddington in Paddington 2; here, Grant is a synthesis of both. (Grant jokingly referred to Thorpe's treatment of Norman in the series as "revenge" against Whishaw for his character's victory in the Paddington 2.)
• Iron Woobie: Norman. He's frequently mistreated at work, is too unstable to hold down a modeling job he enjoys, and has a short, unhappy marriage with a girl whose father hates him, and who later leaves with their child; during all of this, he has to witness Thorpe's public, successful political rise and happy marriage and family. Then Thorpe tries to have him killed (and watches his beloved dog Rinka get shot in front of him), and Thorpe gets away with everything. Despite all of this, he's a Determinator who refuses to be silenced or waste away in the darkness, and he manages to outlive the crumbling, disgraced Thorpe in the end.

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