Brian and Maggie review – it's a real worry when Margaret Thatcher seems this admirable
Brian and Maggie is a two-parter billed as a docuseries by its creators that traces the relationship between former Labour MP turned journalist Brian Walden (Steve Coogan) and Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter) and its abrupt ending, brought about by his uncustomarily scorching interview with her after chancellor Nigel Lawson's shock resignation in 1989.
Written by Sherwood's James Graham, it is directed by Stephen Frears and boasts a cast full of notables fit to stand alongside Coogan and Walter. Yet it is an odd beast, perhaps because it is trying to do so much. It is partly an examination of the importance of the long-form political interview, for which Walden was famous, in a democratic society, and a lament for a bygone age when the argument for it could still be made. It is partly an examination of proximity to power and the cosiness that can develop between people who move in overlapping circles, the boundaries that can be crossed and what happens if you try to re-establish them. It's about friendship, commonalities, betrayals of many kinds. It's about 80s politics generally, Thatcherism specifically, the attraction felt for an ideologue and the ramifications when it wanes. It's about class politics too, as Walden and Thatcher bond over their own-bootstraps upbringings and earned entry into the rarefied worlds of media and politics that their publicly schooled colleagues were effortlessly ushered into.
It's also a little bit about humanising rather than (further) demonising Thatcher, in showing what drove her and what she truly believed in. If she comes to look more admirable in her convictions than in previous portrayals, it is not revisionism at work but rather a measure of how extraordinarily, blatantly and provably venal and corrupt our last few crops of governing politicians have been. Are we in a bad way when Thatcher begins to look like the way and the light? Yes, yes we are.
But on with the show itself. In trying to do so much, it does – as you might expect – none of it quite well enough. The friendship, or at least the growing connection and understanding, between Walden and the prime minister and the difficulties and compromises it represents as the personal, political and professional collide is the most subtly worked element. The shading of Thatcher's iconoclasm into isolation – the loneliness of rising to the top on your own terms – is convincing and (depending on where you stood in the 80s, how well you can put aside memories of the time) almost moving.
But elsewhere there are great gobbets of exposition and extensive speechifying on every theme. 'We were, still are, the only ones to put the interviewee through their paces for an entire show,' says London Weekend Television producer David Cox (Tom Mothersdale) as he tries to convince Walden to take over from Peter Jay as presenter of Weekend World. 'Because political interviews ought to play a part in ordinary people's understanding of the political landscape.' Got that? Similarly clunking scenes occur between cabinet members, especially when it becomes time to explain who stands where on Europe and the exchange rate mechanism versus a floating currency. And there is the occasional simply terrible line, such as Cox's assurance to Walden as he preps for the great showdown: 'You're not a good interviewer, Brian. You're an exceptional interviewer.' It makes for a herky-jerky dramatic experience, and this is – whatever it is billed as – a drama. The 'docuseries' label is presumably demanded because verbatim extracts are performed by Coogan and Walters. But drama it is, and as drama, it fails to catch fire.
This may also be due to the fact that Walden v Thatcher is not and never will be Frost v Nixon. It does not have iconic cultural status. Nobody remembers where they were when Walden asked Maggie if she was to blame for Lawson's resignation. It was not instrumental in her downfall. He was in the right place at the right time, just as the resentful man-babies were gathering to push her off the cliff.
Which is not to say Brian and Maggie isn't interesting or doesn't give you plenty to think about and chew over later (including the parts of the interview in which Walden criticises her inability to show warmth, which haven't aged well in a more egalitarian age). But there is a detached, declamatory aspect to it overall that prevents the whole from triumphing.
Brian and Maggie is on Channel 4 now.
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