Ten things wrong with "Margaret"

1) Drama-doc: the old chestnut

The big thing wrong with last week's BBC2 docudrama (Margaret) is the usual problem: neither fish nor fowl. With the inevitable weasel words at the beginning (based on true events, but words have been changed), you don't know which words were true (and according to whom?) and which are simply made up by the writer.

2) Clichés

Denis could have been written straight out of Private Eye. Lots of golf, whiskey and blimpish comments about pinkos. Is any of it true? Who knows. Mark ditto. Lots of stuff from Margaret about about "daddy." Of course. Tebbit and Alan Clark effed and blinded. Is that what they really did at the time?  And you know you're going to get that moment with John Sergeant…

3) Heseltine as panto dame

Poor Oliver Cotton. With that wig and those eyebrows he never stood a chance. Pure naked ambition. Of course (see clichés).

4) Whiskey

Outside of Mad Men, has anyone drunk so much whiskey in a TV drama?

5) Lindsay Duncan

Great actress, one of the best of the past 30 years. But she was completely wrong for this part. Not for a moment did she look right or sound right. Not the least of the problems is that Duncan is stunningly beautiful and Thatcher, even in her prime, was an ugly old boot. Hence the weirdness of men like Mitterrand who compared her to Marilyn Monroe (and Caligula, of course).  Secondly, Duncan is almost the right age (58 to Thatcher's 65) but, again, looks much younger, partly because she hasn't spent the last 11 years reading dispatch boxes till 4am and hasn't drunk (according to Margaret) her bodyweight in whiskey every day.

That's the second big problem with docudrama. We all know what Thatcher, Heseltine, Douglas Hurd and Tebbit looked and sounded like. And they didn't look or sound like that. Heath sounded right(ish) but looked completely wrong. Major (played by the divine Michael Maloney)  was intriguing (in two senses) but didn't look or sound right.

The only ones who seemed remotely plausible were James Fox (as Charles Powell), John Sessions (astonishing as Howe, which must be like having to play blotting paper) and Kevin McNally (as a very blokey Ken Clarke).

6) "Alan Clark!"

Of course, we don't recognise the actor chosen to play Clark, becase he doesn't look right (see 5 above) and he hasn't started to speak yet, so how do we tell the viewer who he is? By getting Heseltine (in that wig and eyebrows) to shout his name at him so even the dimmest viewer will get the idea. Was this the scriptwriter or some BBC executive on the umpteenth viewing?

This opens the floodgates. Everyone calls everyone by their first name, because, of course, we won't know who "Malcolm" (Rifkind) or "John" (is it Selwyn Gummer? is it Wakeham?) could possibly be? Where was Norman Fowler? After a while, you began to wonder why does everyone call everyone else by their name? Are they afraid they'll forget? Have they all got Alzheimer's?

7) 'What am I going to do?'

This isn't something wrong with "Margaret." This is one of the moments they got most right. One of the most telling things about Thatcher's career, which tells you all you need to know about her, is that she's done nothing worth a damn since she got booted out. Compare her with Iain Duncan Smith, trying to work out what's wrong with "broken Britain," or Jimmy Carter and Al Gore who have taken out huge issues and tried to make a difference. The iron law of retired politicians seems to be the more right-wing they are the less they care once they have retired. Reagan? Nixon? Bush Jr?

8) Completely barking

According to Margaret, Thatcher just shouted at everyone. She behaved like a complete monster. Nero with a bad wig. The question is, if she was really like that, why didn't someone put an axe in her head sometime in 1975?

9) Context?

Why did they get rid of her? We're never told (though it's hardly a mystery when this drunken monster goes around screaming at everyone all the time). There was one reference to "poll tax riots." Opionion polls anyone? Let's not bother with any kind of context.

10) Whose tragedy?