A new incarnation of 'The Crown' is being considered

An insider told The Sun newspaper's TV Biz column: "The consensus was that the royal drama seemed to wane the closer it came to modern day and retelling multiple stories that so many were familiar with.

"But 'Scoop' showed that rather than doing this in a drawn-out, ten-part series, focusing instead on one moment in time seemed to hook people.

"If they can repeat that pattern by delivering prequels in a short¬er form, they bel¬ieve they may have come up with a winning formula for a new incarnation of 'The Crown'."

'Scoop', which starred Billie Piper as 'Newsnight' booker Sam McAlister and Rufus Sewell as the Duke of York, followed the royal's 'Newsnight' interview, where he was asked about connections to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Rufus recently insisted he had to portray Prince Andrew "fairly".

During an interview with the Metro newspaper, he said: "It was resisting the temptation to slant one way or another.

"In the middle of it is a human being and humans are a strange mixture. People who do good things can be unpleasant, people who are nice can be evil, people who do terrible things can do good things. And people who do great things can occasionally do bad. It's mixed up.

"[I endeavoured to] put everything, as I saw it, in there, including uncomfortable levels of positivity as well as negativity."

The film also starred Keeley Hawes as the duke's former private secretary Amanda Thirsk, and the actress admitted the role was a "difficult part", but also "quite luxurious" because the secretary wasn't as well-known as some of the others.

She said: "On the one hand, that was a difficult part, and on the other, that was quite luxurious compared with what everybody else had to go through - that I was able to sort of create something of my own in Amanda."