Two days after the shock resignation of her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, in 1989, "Margaret Thatcher sat down for what she thought would be a straightforward TV interview", said Dan Einav in the Financial Times. The man opposite her, Brian Walden, was a friend, but when the camera started rolling, the PM "found herself facing a tenacious interrogator rather than a sympathetic ally".
The interview is the subject of this two-part Channel 4 drama by James Graham, and starring Harriet Walter and Steve Coogan. A parable about "the perils of mixing personal and political life", it faithfully recreates the interview itself, but becomes rather "stilted and overwritten" elsewhere, "with a stagy feel [that] leaves you wondering whether it might have been more impactful as a play".
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