The bohemian djurrättsaktivisten Lord Arran, who fought for the legalization of homosexuality in England in 1967, tried at the same time also get a ban on that shoot badgers. On the question of why the last bill went through and not the latter, he learns to have replied that “there are not that many badgers in the House of Lords”.

“An English scandal” is packed with the kind of humor. A blatant recognition of forbidden passions and a as natural and virtuous mörkande of the same. For mp, Jeremy Thorpe and his closest men are double standards is not only a constraint, it is a game.

the Drama is based on a much-publicized court case from 1979, when Thorpe, then leader of the liberal party, was accused of a mordkomplott on his former lover, the stableboy, the vagabond, model and hundskötaren Norman Jusiff Scott.

Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw) Photo: BBC

Russell T. Davies, who, among other things, created the series ”Queer as folks”, has boiled down two decades-long love – and rättegångsdramat to three concentrated hours, but it is the director Stephen Frears, which gives it a crackle of euphoric energy.

Frears is equally adept at tell us about the outsiders, and vulnerable (“the Grifters”, “Dirty, pretty things”) as if the upper classes first cardinal (“Dangerous desires”, “The Queen”). In addition, he always believes one hundred percent in their straight, obvious depictions of male homosexuality, already in the eighties, with “My beautiful laundrette” and “Prick up your ears”.

“An English scandal” runs all his älsklingsteman together. Grant is phenomenal as the self-righteous, constantly ironic Thorpe who can admit that he’s sometimes looking for the “release” of the men, but never that they arouse some emotions in him – “this is impossible”. But also Ben Wishaw overtakes. You thought perhaps that you had seen most of his essential charm, but his Norman is full of dynamic contradictions: weak and conniving, brainless but masterful and eloquent, terrified but “perhaps the bravest man in the country”, as Thorpes friend notes.

Thorpe Norman has, in fact, no problems to speak loudly and vividly about sex and feelings. For Thorpe it is like to be the victim chop broken water pipe or a huvudartär: His secrets spurts suddenly out in all directions. Because Norman’s conduct, moreover, is completely unpredictable – “He can’t even blackmail properly” – see Thorpe no other way out than to eliminate him. Rather than go to him, the very least.

Davies and Frears pull and tear in the threads that perhaps is even more tangled in our days. The contradiction between the elite, who think right and act of altruism, and the svages experience, justified or not, of not being seen and heard.

Even more obvious is, of course, links to the #metoo, when Norman in a courtroom will tell you exactly, appalling, and entertaining how it was when the honourable member came in to his newfound little “rabbit” with a jar of vaseline and took his gay virginity.

Jeremy Thorpe (Hugh Grant) and Norman Scott (Ben Whishaw). Photo: BBC

weave together all the relevant and contradictory threads of a drama that swings accompanied relentlessly as a metronome between tragedy and comedy. They declare themselves to be never, bridge never contradictions, but just lets the characters present themselves in all their contradictory splendour.

It was a long time since you saw something similar.