Political Drama

Later this evening the next episode of David Hare's latest offering, Roadkill, will screen on BBC1. It has a stellar cast who have all doubtless given breathless interviews to the Meeja about the honour that they feel in acting out the tired polemic of our national dramatist. I will be watching - it is quite diverting and beautifully played. Is Hugh Laurie ever anything but superb? What we should not do however is apply the adjective 'great' to this watchable hokum. Hare never whispers his message when he can shout it and that message is I suppose at least consistent - all Tories are bastards - without exception. 

By one of those nice accidents I was looking for our dvd of The Philadelphia Story this afternoon. Couldn't locate it - suspect it may be at Plas Piggy and thereby off-limits to these diseased English hands. But it it's an ill wind and all that because I came across State of Play and so the Groupie and I sat down to watch the first episode. It is the work of the reliable Paul Abbott and, I'll tell you what, somebody ought to send a copy to David Hare and let him know that you can make a point in ways other than bashing your audience over the head with your metaphorical socialist mallet.

And if you really want to see good political drama give YouTube a blast and peer through the hazy video quality and try the 1969 Play of the Month television adaptation of Julius Caesar - Julius Caesar. The play is artfully cut into the two hour slot that it was given and at no stage is the dramatist (or the director) screaming his bias at you. Which is rather the point. As the programme notes by Emma Smith for the Crucible's 2017 production of the play nicely put it:

Ultimately, we have to pick our own way through the rhetoric, the self-serving, and the fake news. The ethical challenge of Julius Caesar is precisely that it does not tell us what to think, but makes us think for ourselves. Not bad training for our troubled times.

Amen to that. Or as the Pig less politely might put it - stop shouting at me, I'm not bloody deaf.