Notes on a Scandal

Notes on a Scandal is a British drama centred on two teachers at a London secondary school. Barbara Covett is a solitary, long-serving history teacher whose only confidante is her diary. When Sheba Hart, an idealistic new art teacher, arrives at the school, Barbara is drawn to her and gradually engineers a friendship. She soon learns that Sheba is involved with a fifteen-year-old pupil, and she uses that knowledge to tighten her hold on the younger woman, threatening to expose the affair to Sheba's husband and to everyone else.

The film was directed by Richard Eyre and written by Patrick Marber, adapted from Zoë Heller's novel, which was published as What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal. It sits between Eyre's Stage Beauty and The Other Man in his filmography. Judi Dench plays Barbara and Cate Blanchett plays Sheba, with Bill Nighy as Sheba's husband Richard, Andrew Simpson as the pupil Steven Connolly, and supporting turns from Phil Davis and Michael Maloney.

Made for a modest budget, the film took roughly three times its cost at the worldwide box office, a solid return for a two-hander of this kind. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 89,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 7.1 from just over a thousand votes. A critics' rating of 7.7 from 175 reviews places it ahead of the audience scores.