A Very Royal Scandal: 5 downfall documentaries and drama series

Using a blend of fact and imagination, three-episode docu-drama A Very Royal Scandal pieces together the events surrounding BBC Newsnight reporter Emily Maitlis’ (Ruth Wilson) televised 2019 interview with Britain’s Prince Andrew (played by a wonderfully squirrelly and shifty Michael Sheen). The world watched, open mouthed, as the Prince bumbled, blundered and blustered, while his interviewer grilled him about his decades-long friendship with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (John Hopkins) – a registered sex offender since his conviction for child prostitution in 2008.

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Despite growing up in the spotlight and an entire lifetime of media training, the Prince fumbled the 58-minute interview when confronted with evidence that couldn’t be brushed aside, including his documented 1999 visit to Little James Island, aka “Epstein Island”, where Jeffrey Epstein provided the elite with access to women and children who he’d entrapped into sex work. Photographs also proved their continuing friendship, as Prince Andrew and Epstein were photographed together when the Prince was a guest in Epstein’s home, just after Epstein’s release from prison in 2010.

Throughout the interview, Prince Andrew disputed victims’ testimony and dismissed their suffering – despite documented evidence – choosing instead to focus on how he’d damaged his family’s reputation by associating with Epstein. And despite that, he claimed not to regret their friendship, insisting that it had led him to “useful” opportunities. But when Prince Andrew tut-tutted about Epstein’s behaviour, calling it “unbecoming”, Maitlis ground his and the viewers’ nose in reality of Epstein’s crimes, retorting, “Unbecoming? He was a sex offender.” 

Following the interview, the businesses and charities Prince Andrew was involved with ran like rats to drop the association. He stepped down from his official royal duties (financed by the country’s taxes) in 2019. And in 2022, Prince Andrew settled the civil sexual assault case brought against him by one of Epstein’s trafficking victims, Virginia Guiffre, out of court. 

So we’re all ears and eyes as A Very Royal Scandal takes us behind closed doors during the build-up to the interview itself – as it tackles the claims that the prince’s private secretary Amanda Thirsk (Joanna Scanlan) urged him to participate in it against the advice of the palace insiders and his PR team. The series also fills in the blanks in the interview’s aftermath, as we watch the royal family, especially Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice (Honor Swinton Byrne) and Eugenie (Sofia Oxenham), grapple with his disgrace.

While he is – as he so often points out – a member of the royal family, Prince Andrew is also one of a small handful of powerful men who’ve been exposed once the evidence finally piles too high to be ignored, and the scales of justice start to tip.

4 more downfall documentaries

Juan Carlos Downfall of the King

For 40 years, Spain’s King Juan Carlos I was a hero to his people as he helped to rebuild the country following years under the fascist dictatorship of General Franco (1939-1975). But in 2012, when he broke his hip while hunting elephants in Botswana during an economic crisis at home, reporters didn’t just expose his hypocrisy as the honorary president of Spain’s branch of the World Wildlife Fund. The spotlight also shone on his string of mistresses, including Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstei. And she, in turn, during an interview with police, claimed that the King had received kickbacks from the construction of a high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia, and had stashed around $1 billion in ill-gotten gains in offshore accounts, while using her address in Monaco to dodge Spain’s taxes. 

This documentary miniseries dials up the drama as the former King’s closest friends and enemies share their perspectives and delve deeper behind the headlines.

How far did he fall? Juan Carlos de Borbón abdicated in 2014 and went into exile in Abu Dhabi. He continued to represent Spain at international state events until his “retirement” in 2019, and has been the subject of multiple (successful) tax evasion investigations. 

Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy

On 5 May 2025, Bad Boy Records founder, musician, and record producer Sean Combs goes on trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Ten more civil lawsuits await court dates. Among the accusations he’ll be facing include claims that he kidnapped, drugged and raped women, holding them at gunpoint and threatening them with violence.

In 2023, Casandra Ventura became the first woman to sue Combs for rape and assault ‒ a claim that was settled out of court thanks, in part, to CCTV footage showing Mr Combs kicking Casandra Ventura as she lay in a hotel hallway in 2016. 

This documentary film digs back through Sean Combs’ childhood and history in the industry during interviews with everyone from accusers, to childhood friends and employees, including a former bodyguard and makeup artist. Among the allegations of sexual abuse, there are also claims about Combs using violence and intimidation against young musicians, with one performer on Combs’ MTV show, Making the Band, revealing that he insisted that one band member made him so angry that he wanted to “eat their flesh”.

How far did he fall? Since his arrest on 16 September 2024, Sean Combs has been jailed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. A lead member of his legal team, Anthony Ricco, resigned in late February 2025 claiming, “Under no circumstances can I continue to effectively serve as counsel for Sean Combs.”

The Truth vs Alex Jones

On 14 December 2012, a 20-year-old white man, Adam Lanza, entered Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he shot dead 20 children aged six to seven years old, along with six members of the school’s staff – all in the space of five minutes. Earlier in the day, he’d murdered his mother (who’d bought his gun for him), and when the police arrived at the school, Lanza turned the gun on himself. 

The shooting raised, yet again, calls for stricter gun control in the US. So despite the dead bodies of adults and children, autopsy reports, police reports, grieving families, traumatised survivors, and every other piece of supporting evidence, radio talk show host Alex Jones, creator of the conspiracy theory and hate speech website InfoWars, used his platform to suggest, and then insist, that the shooting had never happened and was, in fact, a lie spread by the government to justify their tightening of firearms legislation. 

Dan Reed, director-producer of documentary The Truth vs Alex Jones picks up the story as, in collaboration with the parents of the victims, he follows their struggle to take Alex Jones to court for spreading his conspiracy for profit. The documentary takes us into the courtroom to witness Alex Jones’ cynicism and greed, along with his belief that his exploitation of tragedy is both somehow “clever”, and within his right to free speech.

How far did he fall? In 2022, the court ordered Alex Jones to pay out $1.5 billion in damages, which he cannot evade by declaring personal bankruptcy. Seizing Jones’s assets, however, requires a complex and costly legal process and forensic accounting investigation. And while he was banned from every popular social media platform in the US, Elon Musk allowed him on X after buying the company. He continues to spread malicious disinformation.

Steinheist

On 6 December 2017, after Steinhoff’s CEO Markus Jooste resigned amid an investigation into accounting irregularities, the company’s share price plunged by 90% in a week, wiping over R200 billion off Johannesburg’s stock exchange – and off ordinary South Africans’ pensions and investments. “Steinheist is the story of Markus Jooste and a multi-billion-rand lie that everyone bought – a lie that was built across over two decades,” says director Richard Finn Gregory. “How did this happen? How did no one see it coming? And how is Markus Jooste not in jail?”  

The first three episodes of this documentary series, filmed in collaboration with Financial Mail editor and Steinheist author Rob Rose, investigate how, under the leadership of charismatic accountant Markus Jooste, Steinhoff went from being a small furniture company, to challenging global giant Ikea. Then, just as Jooste was tail up, head down in the profit trough, accounting firm Deloitte’s 7 000-page forensic report on the business’s accounting irregularities blew the lid off Jooste and his cronies’ shady year-end profit reports and faked deals. Jooste’s abrupt resignation not long after that exposed his long-standing fraud to the tune of billions, which he referred to as a “mistake” on his part. And in 2024, Steinhoff lost the legal battle to keep the contents of the report a secret. 

How far did he fall? In March 2025, two new episodes of Steinheist pick up the money trail again, taking us inside the story of what happened when The SA Reserve Bank raided Markus Jooste’s properties and froze over R1 billion of his assets in October 2022, while Steinhoff instituted a civil suit to reclaim R850 million in the incentives, salary and bonuses it paid him. And we stick with the action until the dramatic events of March 2024, when Jooste chose to end his life after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) fined him R475 million, and he was ordered to hand himself over to law enforcement.

Prepare to be frustrated, appalled, and even fascinated by how far bare-faced lying will get you!