For the benefit of anyone who’s missed Steve Coogan‘s headline-grabbing press tour (the actor suggested that Thatcher was so lacking in empathy that she would have been diagnosed with a disorder were she around today), Channel 4’s two-part drama Brian and Maggie recreates the moment that arguably sealed the fate of the outgoing PM.
The interview itself is covered in the second of the two episodes written by James Graham (Sherwood, Brexit: The Uncivil War) and directed by Stephen Frears, whose most relevant work in this context is the 2003 New Labour drama The Deal. The opening episode begins in 1977 as Walden (Coogan), having resigned as a Labour MP and taken a job with London Weekend Television, conducts the first ever full-length interview with Thatcher (Harriet Walter), then leader of the opposition.
Recreating interviews seems to be a new TV genre (Photo: Matt Frost/Channel 4)His reply goes to the heart of Graham’s drama – a paean to a time when politicians submitted to such lengthy forensic television interviews. Brian and Maggie begins with an archive montage illustrating the erosion of this journalistic art form, with increasingly combative questioning from Robin Day to Jeremy Paxman putting MPs on the defensive. Indeed, the drama is based on Bob Burley’s book Why Is This Lying B*****d Lying to Me?, a title derived from a famous Paxman quote about his antagonistic approach to the job.
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Read MoreWalden and Thatcher were two peas in a pod, both lower-middle class Midlanders made good, by way of Oxford and a belief in hard graft. “I was never a socialist,” reveals the former Labour MP over a cosy fireside chat, as they toast their whiskey tumblers to meritocracy and their aversion to “bluffing and blagging” public school types. This scene lands despite threatening to be too on the nose, as does a subsequent one in which Thatcher phones Walden to tell an unfunny joke that she had failed to remember earlier.
Brian Walden (Coogan) and Thatcher were friends before the interview (Photo: Channel 4)But it’s the two lead performances that are vital. Coogan had a much tougher job last year playing Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning; Walden is far less familiar, his most distinctive feature being his inability to pronounce his Rs. Walter, on the other hand, is following the likes of Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady and Gillian Anderson in The Crown. Hers could be the best Thatcher yet – particularly in her intonation and mannerisms.
‘Brian and Maggie’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on Channel 4
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