IT’S worth remembering, at least once a year, that Channel 4 owes its entire existence to Margaret Thatcher, who created the network in 1982.
In the process, she helped feed everyone who works there, from Naked Attraction, with all its cold, frightened, shrivelled-up scrotums, to Channel 4 News, with all its cold, frightened, shrivelled-up scrotums.
Steve Coogan’s Brian Walden portrayal misses the mark – thankfully Harriet Walter is a revelation as Maggie[/caption]
Ivan Kaye’s portrayal of Nigel Lawson nails the ex-Chancellor’s breathless husk, but ends up resembling Fred Trueman from his Indoor League days[/caption]
And their response to this astonishing act of political charity?
Like spoiled brats the world over, Channel 4 hates the woman who gave it life, privilege and wealth, and vilifies her at every turn.
The latest example being its Brian And Maggie drama, written by James Graham, who specialises in bending 1980s history to suit his own left-of-centre political opinions.
He most famously did this with two series of BBC1’s Sherwood, a drama about the bitter divisions of the 1984-85 miners’ strike which managed to avoid any mention of the NUM’s refusal to hold a strike ballot.
Sociopathic cult
And here, Graham’s sort of repeated the trick by deciding it wasn’t the poll tax, Europe and the Conservative Party’s institutional stupidity that brought down Maggie, but a 1989 interview with ITV’s Brian Walden that’s remembered by no one except a handful of the world’s most lonely political trainspotters.
The result is as venomous and deluded as you’d expect from him and Channel 4, and as the writer knows, deep in his soul, will do nothing other than burnish the legend of a woman who, if she were standing tomorrow, would win a landslide election triumph to dwarf all of her 1980s victories.
I can’t deny, though, the production has done it in entertaining fashion thanks largely to the cast and characters, who’ve got a real hit-and-miss Spitting Image feel about them.
Lucky for the drama, then, that Harriet Walter, despite being about 20 years too old for the role, is a revelation as Maggie
Paul Higgins, for instance, is a million miles away from nailing Sir Geoffrey Howe’s voice, but does look like the former Deputy Leader, if he’d gone to the Ally Pally darts dressed as Where’s Wally, while Ivan Kaye’s Nigel Lawson has mastered the ex-Chancellor’s strange breathless husk, but looks more like Fred Trueman during the Indoor League phase of his career.
The one who’s failed on both counts, a bit to my surprise, however, is Steve Coogan, who couldn’t look less like Brian Walden and seems to have lost the impression halfway between his Stan Laurel turn and South African golfer Gary Player.
Lucky for the drama, then, that Harriet Walter, despite being about 20 years too old for the role, is a revelation as Maggie, mastering everything from the voice to the outwardly domineering body language that masked a whole load of insecurities.
So comprehensively does she steal every scene that I’d normally feel sorry for the other main actor.
Coogan, however, is one of those performers who believes, possibly rightly, that his private life shouldn’t be up for public scrutiny, yet perversely thinks his political opinions are of the utmost public importance and should be imposed upon us as often as possible.
Fatally, I think he’s let them get the better of him here, as he cannot disguise his dislike or the feeling his heart still belongs to the same Labour Party I also joined back in the 1980s.
The Left’s bitter resentment of Thatcherism’s success lives on
A poisonous sociopathic cult it was too, and one that deliberately blinded itself to the fact Margaret Thatcher conquered a fascist junta in the Falklands, dragged the Labour leadership kicking and screaming towards economic sanity, and was cheered by tens of thousands of “communist” workers when she visited Gdansk, in 1988, because eastern Europeans regarded her as their saviour, rather than a bunch of tut-tutting Guardian readers.
Nasty, hypocritical
The Left’s bitter resentment of Thatcherism’s success lives on, though, in a single self-satisfied line of Brian And Maggie, where one of Walden’s producers laments: “We used to have communities, now we just have stuff.”
Point of fact here, we still have communities long after Maggie and had loads of “stuff” before her as well — it’s just that it didn’t work very well and tended to break down on the hard shoulder of the M6 because it was made by the state.
The TV sets are better now as well, although there’s been a completely inappropriate growth in the vanity of the industry, which is why Brian And Maggie finished with Maggie’s spokesman Bernard Ingham ironically dismissing the impact of the interview and claiming: “At the end of the day, it’s just telly.”
He was right, though.
It’s nasty, hypocritical, egotistical, biased, two-faced, unforgivably self-important, usually wrong and occasionally entertaining.
But it’s still just telly.
Facts: A good idea
ITV’s Good Morning Britain sparked outrage by omitting the word ‘Jewish’ from Ranvir Singh’s report on King Charles’ Auschwitz-Birkenau visit[/caption]
ITV’S Good Morning Britain began a shameful week by eliminating the word “Jewish” from a Ranvir Singh bulletin about King Charles’ visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau on Holocaust Memorial Day.
A brief and slightly grudging apology for this astonishing oversight followed, on Tuesday.
But by Wednesday Laura Tobin, the show’s part-building weather nerd, was standing in front of a “Doomsday clock” warning viewers the human race was just “89 seconds away from extinction”.
Not literally, obviously, or we’d all have been vaporised during a Kevin Maguire monologue, which would have felt like a sweet release, in the circumstances.
To play on legitimate fears about climate change, AI technology and nuclear war, this countdown to oblivion is merely a metaphor used by a cabal of “the most eminent scientists in the world” (scaremongers) who, with equal certainty, predicted there were only 120 seconds left until Armageddon, back in 1953.
So here’s a radical idea for GMB. Learn the facts about a real human annihilation before you start putting the fear of God in people about an imaginary one.
And in the meantime, just tell us if it’s going to rain or not.
Gemma Collins claims to be ‘two people in one’ on Pointless Celebrities[/caption]
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week. Pointless Celebrities: “I’m Gemma Collins, the UK’s number one reality star. I’m two people in one.”
Two? And the rest, Gemma.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan, showing her a picture of an astronaut on the moon: “Who took this photo of Buzz Aldrin?”
Dr Linda Papadopoulos: “Lance Armstrong.”
Celebrity Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “What fossil fuel is mined in a colliery?”
Olga Koch: “Oil.”
And The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “What long-necked birds are the symbol of the city of Lincoln?” Paddy: “Emu.”
“No, swans.” You’re thinking of Hull, Paddy.
IDEAS pitch: Channel 5. Susan Calman Stays At Home.
To be clear, not a programme pitch.
Just an idea.
WEATHER tip of the week. Lorraine, Dr Amir Khan: “Stay indoors, that’s the best advice if you’re out.”
Random TV irritations
BBC1 urgently needing to sack The Traitors cretin who introduced the Seer twist and ruined the entire point of the show.
Channel 4’s Brian And Maggie using the former PM’s rumoured beauty treatments to portray her as mad, in a manner they’d never dream of doing with any other woman.
And a rather familiar-looking new series of The Apprentice offering up an over-promising one-man business disaster called Keir. We’re covered, thanks.
Great sporting insights
TIM SHERWOOD: “We all know Pep’s good enough, but he’s not good enough to manage a team in sixth.”
Michael Dawson: “I agree with my opinion.” And Jamie Mackie: “Luton made a good fist of being in the Premier League when they got relegated.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
BBC2’s Alison Hammond’s Florida Unpacked, day two, to son Aidan: “Do you know what’s so lovely? The fact you want to spend time with me. So many 19-year-olds do not want to be spending time with their mum. It’s so lovely.”
And nothing at all to do with another nepo baby freeloading at licence-payers’ expense either.
ALISON HAMMOND’S Florida Unpacked, day four, the Everglades, Alison: “Are we going to be OK? Is any alligator going to eat me?” Tour guide Tim Schwartzman: “Worst case scenario, we get an alligator that’s a little more tolerant and lots of us get up close to him.”
Best case scenario?
Yes.
TV quiz. Who said the following this week: “When it comes to birds, I like mine quite simple. Quite a nondescript little bird, in fact, that’s quite common?”
A) Winterwatch’s Iolo Williams on the little grebe.
B) Prince Harry on Being The Spare.
TV Gold
MICHAEL McINTYRE’S brilliant Who Do You Think You Are? spoof, with Olly Murs’ number one fan, on his BBC1 Big Show.
The Apprentice’s new resident maniac, Carlo Brancati, trying to sell an e-bike tour of Austria’s Dolomites mountains to a 97-year-old man from Denmark.
Scotland’s Highlands remaining the true star of The Traitors and the one thing the BBC1 production team can’t ever ruin.
And Sky Showcase’s The Tattooist’s Son: Return To Auschwitz and BBC2’s The Last Musician Of Auschwitz, above, which, in the normal run of things, I’d describe as the best shows of the week.
But I’m not sure you’ll see two more staggering and moving documentaries all year.
Lookalike of the week
THANKS to reader Callum Grant for noticing that no matter how many ageing apps you put Kaz from Love Island through, it’s always the same result. EastEnders’ Pat Butcher.
