Television series
Anatomy of a Scandal
Anatomy of a Scandal is a glossy, tightly wound courtroom drama about a Westminster power couple whose marriage cracks open when the husband is accused of rape. It splits attention between the wife's slow reckoning and the prosecutor's methodical case, using flashback and shifting perspective to complicate who deserves belief. Handsome, expensive-looking, and morally uncomfortable by design — prestige drama with real teeth.
If you liked this
Big Little Lies2017
Sun-bleached, star-stacked, and just as interested in the private ruin behind photogenic marriages — a masterclass in turning glossy soap into something genuinely unsettling, with performances that make every secret land hard.
But The Monterey gloss and starry ensemble can tip into melodrama that Anatomy of a Scandal mostly avoids.
The Undoing2020
Another marriage that looks perfect until a violent accusation splits it open, told with the same slow-drip tension and expensive apartments — if you liked watching certainty dissolve here, this scratches the same itch.
But Moves at a crawl and leans harder on style than psychological depth in its final stretch.
Apple Tree Yard2017
British, unglamorous, and far more interested in consent and shame than courtroom pyrotechnics — Emily Watson is devastating as a woman whose affair collides with an assault that upends her credibility entirely.
But Bleaker and slower paced, with none of the visual polish or star wattage of the Netflix version.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Promising Young Woman2020
Both interrogate consent and the stories powerful men tell about themselves — this one just trades the courtroom for a candy-pink revenge plot and dares you to enjoy it.
A candy-colored revenge thriller about a woman weaponising the same culture of privileged male impunity the Whitehouses inhabit — funnier, angrier, and far less interested in giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.
But Tonally whiplash-inducing, glossy and pulpy where the show is restrained, and its ending is divisive.
More like this (8)
Doctor Foster2015
A suburban GP unravels her husband's affair with forensic, gleeful precision — less about the law, more about the theatre of humiliation and revenge, and wickedly entertaining because of it.
But Its second series overreaches into soap-opera territory that undercuts the sharpness of the first.
The Split2018
Swaps the courtroom thriller engine for divorce lawyers untangling other people's marriages while their own quietly fray — warmer, funnier, and just as sharp about what privilege hides.
But Lower stakes and gentler pacing — nobody's facing prison here, just ordinary heartbreak and mountains of paperwork.
Bodyguard2018
Same British political corridors, same sense that everyone powerful is lying to you, but cranked into full thriller mode — pure adrenaline from a show that trusts its audience to keep up.
But Action-driven and plot-twisty rather than psychologically probing — a different, faster kind of pleasure entirely.
Broadchurch2013
A small-town crime unravels into a courtroom drama that treats grief and testimony with real weight — David Tennant and Olivia Colman anchor a show that never cheapens its tragedy for spectacle.
But Crime-procedural at heart rather than political scandal, and considerably slower and more melancholic in tone.
Defending Jacob2020no page yet
An American courtroom drama about a father defending his teenage son, asking the same uncomfortable question this show does: how far will you bend the truth to protect someone you love.
But Trades British restraint for American melodrama, and its divisive, ambiguous ending won't satisfy everyone watching.
A Very English Scandal2018
The same world of establishment men closing ranks to protect their own, but played as tragicomedy — a true story of a cabinet minister's cover-up that's as absurd as it is damning.
But Its dark comedy sits oddly if you want the grim seriousness of Anatomy of a Scandal.
The Staircase2022
Same machinery — a spouse on trial, a marriage picked apart in open court, a public deciding who to believe — but unscripted, so the ambiguity is real rather than engineered.
The real thing this show is dramatising a version of: a French documentary crew embedded for years inside an actual murder trial, watching a marriage and a defence strategy get built in real time.
But Slow, unscored, and genuinely uncertain — there's no tidy resolution, just years of legal grind.
Rashomon1950
Anatomy of a Scandal's whole structure — competing accounts of one night, truth as a matter of who's telling it — is Rashomon's idea, borrowed by nearly every courtroom drama since.
The film that invented the trick this show leans on constantly: the same event recounted by different witnesses, each version self-serving, none of them quite lies. Seventy minutes, and still unsettling.
But Black-and-white, subtitled, and seventy years old — a big tonal and formal leap from glossy Netflix drama.
People
Cast
Writing
- David E. KelleyCreator
- Melissa James GibsonCreator
Production
- Claire ParkerCo-Executive Producer
- Margaret CherninCo-Executive Producer
- Richard StylesCo-Producer
- Allie GossExecutive Producer
- Bruna PapandreaExecutive Producer
- David E. KelleyExecutive Producer
- Liza ChasinExecutive Producer
- Melissa James GibsonExecutive Producer
- S.J. ClarksonExecutive Producer
- Sarah VaughanExecutive Producer
- Mark KinsellaProducer