TV review

Published Monday 16 June 2008 at 16:05 by Harry Venning

Forty-four minutes of Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley had passed before the name of Mrs Thatcher was first uttered, and the effect was somewhat shocking. Up to that point we had been watching and admiring an ambitious, energetic and - let’s face it - sexy young politician called Margaret Roberts in her heroic struggle against the stuffed shirts and school ties that ran the post-war Conservative Party. But upon marrying businessman boyfriend Denis, and taking his name, the dreaded T-word surfaced and with it a whole barrage of hindsight-assisted connotations. I suspect audience sympathy took quite a dip at this point.

Not that The Long Walk to Finchley, an account of Thatcher’s early political career, made any great claims to historical accuracy. As its whimsical subtitle attested, this was ‘How Margaret Might Have Done It’, making it less of a political biography and more of a satirical speculation. And writer Tony Saint proved himself nothing if not imaginative.

Thanks to a self-indulgent script, the film frequently threatened to tip over into Comic Strip territory and included several crass in-jokes. The young Mark Thatcher gets lost in some sand dunes on holiday, anticipating his Saharan misadventure as an adult. Sister Carol clutches a copy of The Jungle Book, only to be taunted by her twin, “When are you ever going to go into the jungle?”, oblivious to her future destiny as an I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here winner.

It was all somewhat silly, and totally superfluous as audience attention would have been transfixed by Andrea Riseborough’s performance as Thatcher. She was commanding, compelling and convincing, perfectly conveying all the qualities the so-called Iron Lady brought to bear on British politics.

“Maggie Thatcher, your boys took one hell of a beating!” a Norwegian commentator once famously screamed when perennial under-achievers England lost to supposedly inferior opposition, and failed to qualify for the European Championships.

History having repeated itself, the BBC ran “Who are you going to support?” trailers for Match of the Day: Euro 2008 in an optimistic, but I suspect futile, attempt to generate viewer involvement in their coverage. I found myself supporting Poland, for no other reason than I drew them in the sweepstake at work, and felt duly obliged to watch one of their matches.

Half time arrived not a minute too soon, interrupting a dire contest with Austria, and the programme returned to the studio for some punditry. Half time lasts 15 minutes, which is an awful lot of broadcasting dead space to fill if you don’t have the benefit of advert breaks, and daren’t risk an extended Alan Shearer analysis sending the few viewers you have into a collective coma. The solution, reeking of desperation, was a pre-recorded film featuring Adrian Chiles wandering around Vienna looking for the spirit of Sigmund Freud to help cure him of his football obsession.

Match of the Day’s little excursion into comedy-fantasy was so ill conceived, badly made, embarrassing and bizarre that I wonder if I might have hallucinated it. However, as I was the only person I know who watched the match, there is no way of checking.

However, I can still recommend the BBC’s coverage of the competition for the exquisite title sequence alone, created by those perennial over-achievers at Aardman, which sees soccer playing cards come alive to the glorious strains of Mozart. Britain may be rubbish at football, but by crikey we can still beat the world at animation.

DETAILS:

Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley - BBC4, Thursday, June 12, 9pm

Match of the Day: Euro 2008, Austria v Poland - BBC, Thursday, June 12, 7.30pm