‘We used to have communities… now we just have stuff…’
My complete and total disdain for Maggie Thatcher normally precludes me from watching anything in which she is portrayed in even a moderately positive light. I won’t be watching The Iron Lady any time soon. But I could put this aside for Brian and Maggie, mainly due to the presence of Steve Coogan – an actor who always picks interesting roles. While Stephen Frears’ two-part TV event Brian and Maggie was a little too sympathetic towards Thatcher for my tastes, I did enjoy everything else about it…
Based on Rob Burley’s non-fiction book Why Is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me?, Brian and Maggie is a dramatisation of the famous interview between Thatcher (Harriet Walter) and former Labour MP-turned-TV journalist Brian Walden (Coogan). While I was unaware of both Walden and this specific interview (I didn’t catch it when it aired in 1989 – in my defence, I was two years old at the time), Brian and Maggie convincingly argues that it contributed to the end of Thatcher’s premiership in November of 1990.
From Coogan’s own Baby Cow production company, Brian and Maggie is just as much a passionate championing of long-form political interviews than a portrayal of a real historical event. While the intention is obviously admirable, the execution is a little clunky at times, and it’s hard to believe that the TV executives behind the interview were as radical and idealistic as they are portrayed here. Perhaps that’s just me being cynical. As I refuse to do even a modicum of research on this matter due to being completely bone idol, I suppose we’ll never know.
Brian and Maggie works best in the intimate moments shared between the two titular characters. Coogan is typically excellent as Walden – offering more than just imitation and instead achieving a real authenticity and truth in his performance – and Walter does well to avoid caricature in her portrayal of Thatch – although she does imbue her with more of a heart than she actually possessed.
At only two episodes, Brian and Maggie is both an entertaining depiction of an epochal moment in British politics and a treatise on the importance of holding politicians to account. If only it had been a little less didactic…
