LIZ JONES: Watching Scoop makes me think Prince Andrew was played by Newsnight. And now, unbelievably, I am starting to feel sorry for him...

Like anyone who watched the original Newsnight interview with the Duke of York, I came away from it appalled.

How could he not apologise to the victims of his predatory friend Jeffrey Epstein? How could Prince Andrew not 'recall' meeting a young woman, Virginia Roberts, as she was then known?

Why was Prince Andrew so ridiculous, comical even? Remember the claim that he was 'medically' unable to sweat – the 'not knowing' where the bar was in the Tramp nightclub, a night club he’d visited many times before?

Andrew stayed in a sex offender's house because it was 'convenient', he said. He was photographed in Central Park in the company of Epstein, by then a convicted sex offender, because he wanted to say goodbye in an 'honourable' way.

The reaction was explosive, of course, when the BBC aired the interview in 2019. The prince’s trial in the court of public opinion was concluded swiftly. 

'You go, girl!' we all shouted as interviewer Emily Maitlis slowly skewered him.

Maitlis (played by Gillian Anderson) is intelligent, composed, hard-working, in possession of a photographic memory and owner of a whippet, who never leaves her side

But having watched Scoop, the new Netflix film based on programmes fixer Sam McAlister and her book about securing the exclusive interview with Andrew, I am starting to think a little differently.

The plot is the story of how the interview was procured, a sort of sub-Watergate mess of secret meetings, text messages and snatched photos. And the theme, needless to say, is female empowerment in a post-MeToo world. 

Sam (played by Billie Piper) is a working-class girl made good, a single mum who wears leopard print and heels.

Maitlis (played by Gillian Anderson) is intelligent, composed, hard-working, in possession of a photographic memory and owner of a whippet, who never leaves her side. Aww!

Prince Andrew's right-hand woman, Amanda Thirsk, took the blame for allowing the interview to take place (she later stepped down, reportedly with a legal settlement). But, played by Keeley Hawes, she comes across as caring and maternal, wanting only what is best for her man-child charge.

We are reminded many times just why these women (Sam, Emily and Newsnight boss Esme Wren, played by Romola Garai with wide-eyed goodness) are out to nab this particular prince.

This film shows Andrew to be human, but I'm sure that's not what the Newsnight team intended

We see Sam on the top deck of a bus, watching young girls chattering: note to viewer, look how carefree these girls are, but also how vulnerable.

We see the faces of the young girls leaving Epstein's New York mansion. The camera lingers on them.

Photos of the victims are pinned on the walls of the BBC offices, as if this were a police investigations unit and the point is to catch and convict a killer.

Yet, by showing all these nuts and bolts – all that chasing a story to stay in a job – Scoop had a surprising effect on me... I started to feel sorry for Prince Andrew, something I never thought would happen.

There's a sense of something disreputable about the process, something close to duplicity.

What do we make of buying a friendly cocktail for the target’s handler, as Sam does for Thirsk. Or the self-serving line that this is Andrew’s opportunity to set the record straight? 

The assurances that the film-makers can be trusted – that they are, in fact, friends? The credentials waggled under Thirsk’s nose and the promises made that would never be kept? 

No doubt the portrayal of the prince is accurate enough: all that rearranging of Kanga and Roo on his bed, the barking at servants.

There's one scene when Andrew recalls Mummy combing his hair. On another occasion, he spies Maitlis just before the interview is filmed, and he exclaims in surprise and apparent disapproval: 'Trousers!?'

Was he expecting a ringside seat at a saucy pair of knees?

The production team wants us to see a buffoon and only a buffoon, exposing his enormous a*** along the way. It’s as if the film-makers want to destroy him all over again.

(As it happens, the royal backside was played by a body double because Rufus Sewell, though capturing the princely jowls and nobody-home stare perfectly, could not gain sufficient weight in time to play Andrew).

Look out for the moment the Newsnight team – ghoulish in this portrayal – watch the broadcast as it goes out to the nation.

The social media numbers mushroom before their eyes as though they are playing a fruit machine in Vegas. Kerching! Jobs saved at the BBC. Mortgages paid. A Bafta, surely?

Yes, the protagonists are female, but that doesn't make the process on screen either good, or worthy.

Watching it, you'd have to conclude the prince was 'played'. Andrew emerges as an easy target: no matter how high the railings were around the Palace, he was left hideously exposed, playing with a bucket and spade in the sand - surrounded by people too sheltered, cosseted or dim to spot the shark lurking just beneath the surface of the waves.

So far from being trained in good PR and optics, the prince has been tutored to have no self-awareness at all. He truly believed he had nothing to hide. 

Like most people, I've been aghast at the way he's crept back into a more public role, not least seen leading the Royal Family into a recent memorial service, filling the gaps left by his ailing brother, the King, and by the Princess of Wales. How dare he!

Rufus Sewell and Gillian Anderson star in this surprising adaptation of the BBC interview

But for me this film has dampened the anger, the outrage. I wonder if the real Emily Maitlis is cringing slightly.

Andrew comes across not as evil, not as stupid, even, but simply the product of the institution into which he was born.

We all laughed when he told the nation he was 'honourable', but perhaps the uniform, the rituals and the medals have rubbed off on him. He's spent his life passing others in corridors and not knowing their names or their function. He doesn't think a dinner for 12 people is a 'party'. Genuinely.

Above all, he seems lonely.

The lack of acknowledgement or apology to Epstein’s victims was a yawning omission. 

But it was also a mirror held up to the Royal Family, asking how relevant the monarchy is today. How appropriate it is to preach about homelessness when you live in palaces. To demand privacy, when you advocate openness, transparency and mental health awareness. To travel by gas-guzzling helicopter while planting trees.

I wonder if Scoop will be screened at the famous Buckingham Palace movie nights for staff. If it is, I hope they applaud 'Randy, Air Miles' Andy, for still standing.

That’s what the Newsnight team does in Scoop: they applaud each other as the interview goes out. They bagged a scoop and then moved swiftly on. 

This new film shows Andrew to be human, but I'm sure that's not what the Newsnight team intended. Not at all.