Sally Avens

By some strange turn of fate the new Classic Serial is Scoop, Evelyn Waugh's satire on the press (its ownership, practices and function). The story is simple. We are in the 1930s. A mighty newspaper proprietor, Lord Copper, believes wars are good for countries because they unite people against a known enemy. He is persuaded by a beautiful society hostess to send one of her social pets, John Boot, to report the war in far-off Ishmaelia. By mistake, another Boot, William, who writes the Daily Beast's nature notebook, is dispatched. William knows nothing of abroad or reporting. We understand that, like Voltaire's Candide, he will somehow come out of this mess quite well and make us laugh a lot. Jeremy Front has done a deft, sly adaptation, bringing out the brilliance of the characters. Sally Avens has cast it very well (Rory Kinnear as William and Stephen Critchlow as Corker are perfect, David Warner as Lord Copper is pluperfect) and directs it with panache. A better antidote to hysteria cannot be imagined.