Margaret

This dramatisation of the events leading up to Margaret Thatcher's fall from power in November 1990, including a few jumps back in time to 1975 when she beat Ted Heath to the Tory leadership, benefits from a good and controlled central performance by Lindsay Duncan, plus entertaining caricatures of other leading politicians of the time (John Sessions as Geoffrey Howe, Roy Marsden as Norman Tebbit, Oliver Cotton as Michael Heseltine, Roger Allam as John Wakeham, Robert Hardy as Willie Whitelaw, Michael Maloney as John Major, etc., plus Rosemary Leach as The Queen), but is ultimately too detached to present real interest or engagement with its subject.

In newspaper reviews the drama was reviled for presenting Mrs Thatcher in too sympathetic a light, but I think even here it fails - she shuts out her children, only thinks of herself - especially in one staggering speech showing her hungry for power and 'damn the party' - and has an awkward relationship with her long-suffering husband Denis (Ian MacDiarmid). This is not the portrayal of a woman who we can recognise or empathise with. In fact she is presented as a self-made monster who believes her own publicity and can't face up to reality.

Whether all this bears any resemblance to the truth is a moot point. 'Margaret' is worth watching, but does not pass as entertainment, or as anything other than a snapshot of its time, relevant only when events presented remain in living memory.