Endgame? It might discomfort the Royal Family for a few minutes…but it’s hardly a devastating blow: BBC says Omid Scobie’s book fails to pack a punch and is ‘a little bit awkward’ at best – as reviewers call it a ‘hit job reading like a Mumsnet post’

Omid Scobie‘s new book Endgame was today dismissed by a senior BBC reporter as being merely ‘a little bit awkward for a few minutes’ for the Royal Family.

BBC News royal correspondent Sean Coughlan claimed readers expecting ‘juicy scandal and gossip’ would be disappointed and it was ‘not really landing punches’.

He said it was ‘very critical’ of King Charles III, Camilla, Prince William and Kate – but ‘you often feel the biggest flaw they have is not being Prince Harry and Meghan’.

Mr Coughlan added: ‘I think it’s not going to damage the Royal Family but it might be a little bit awkward for a few minutes I think rather than for days and days.’

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, he continued: ‘It’s highly critical but also I think maybe oddly enough it feels slightly out of date. If you call the Royal Family a soap opera, this feels like a soap opera from a couple of years ago.

‘And I think it’s sort of maybe settling some scores. But I don’t think it’s getting under their skin enough to have new information that would be really hurtful.

The first reviews of Omid Scobie’s Endgame are out and critics have said it is ‘devoted to setting the record straight on petty slights against the Sussexes’

‘It’s quite exciting in places but it doesn’t have that explosive power that (Harry’s memorial) Spare had, because partly that was written from one person’s viewpoint who was actually in the ring. But this is a kind of slightly distant criticism from afar.’

It comes after the book faced damning reviews following its release, with one labelling it as a ‘hit job reading like a Mumsnet post about the world’s worst in-laws’.

Endgame, which hits shelves today, received two stars out of five in the Telegraph, which slams the author’s ‘burning indignation that he was shut out’ of the Palace.

It adds that there is ‘little gossip to be had here’ while simultaneously containing ‘a lot of petty detail’. 

The verdict from the Times was not much kinder, calling the book ‘not so much an incisive look at why he thinks the monarchy is doomed, more a mishmash of ancient history’.

The review also mocks Scobie’s ‘po-faced prose’ and describes the book as starting with ‘him buying a black sweater, followed by how he got to a TV studio in Hammersmith’.

The New York Times’ pithy review says we’ve heard most of it before

The Independent has given Endgame three stars in their review. They claim the book paints William as the ‘villain’

Endgame, which hits shelves today, received a damning two stars out of five in the Telegraph

It comes after the usually Sussex-sympathising New York Times compares Scobie’s writing to an AI bot and declares that Harry and Meghan’s favoured journalist does them ‘no favours’.

In a pithy review, the liberal US newspaper claims a chapter on the couple even ‘reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT‘.

It also says the book ‘is not all that different from what Harry presented in ‘Spare’,’ and ‘is devoted to setting the record straight on petty slights against the Sussexes’.

America’s first review of the book adds: ‘Readers hoping for a final death blow of gossip will be disappointed. We’ve heard much of it before. From Fergie, from Diana, from Charles, from Harry, from Harry, from Harry again.’

Meanwhile the similarly left-leaning Independent news website in the UK claims ‘he paints Meghan and Harry in a relentless saintly light’.

The NYT’s writer Eva Wolchover, who co-hosts its Windsors & Losers royal podcast, is critical of Endgame after receiving an advanced copy.

She says: ‘Whether or not Scobie actively collaborated with Meghan and Harry for this book, he does them no favours. Their chapter reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT, and does little to shed light on them as humans.’

The New York Times had the first review in the US, and The Independent in the UK. Both are left-leaning press

Ms Wolchover also says of the author’s warnings that the Royal Family faces ‘extinction’: ‘It’s hard not to find Scobie’s dire predictions a tad hyperbolic.’

She writes: ‘Scobie defines the term ‘endgame’ as ‘the final stages of a chess game after most of the pieces have been removed from the board’, adding: ‘Unless Charles and his heirs act quickly, Scobie underscores, they risk losing the crown, or at the very least, any remaining cultural relevance.’

The Independent had the first British review of Endgame, giving it three-stars.

Writer Anna Pasternak says that Scobie ‘is unfailingly sympathetic to the Sussexes’.

She writes: ‘He does not hold them accountable for anything – he does not, as I had anticipated, demonise Charles or denounce Camilla. I was expecting something different – him possibly laying into evil monarch King Charles and wicked stepmother, Queen Camilla. The real royal villain here is William’.