When it premiered on BBC4 last Thursday, The Alan Clarke Diaries achieved that channel's highest audience to date for an original programme. I caught the Sunday repeat and I can immediately see why - a thoroughly good TV drama.
Back in 1993 I was living in Bath with a landlady who at Christmas bought me a copy of his diaries. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea - political memoirs not being exactly top of my reading list at the time. I knew that they were supposed to be good, but ordinarily I wouldn't give such a book the time of day.
You should understand that before leaving school to go to university, although interested in politics, my experience of politicians was limited to an unfortunate talk given to us by a local MP - Michael Portillo. It went down like such a lead balloon with me, that politicians were off the agenda - particularly Tories who we were never going to be rid of it seemed. This was later upheld when at university in Bath, I met our local MP, Chris Patten. He was a nice genuine bloke, who had been Minister for Overseas Development and was then Secretary of State for the Environment. He cared about things. He was a good Tory. Then it all went very sour when he became Chairman of the party, was persuaded to talk about things like "Double Whammies" and lost his seat (whilst winning the election). At least he was freed up to go to Hong Kong. But I digress.
I dutifully read the book, and was immediately glad that I did. I knew he was a "cad" and a "bounder" who considered himself superior to all before him, but he was as honest and frank as Tony Benn. Hurt has him down to a tee in this series, with that air of distain and bewilderment. We have yet to see much of Jenny Agutter as his wife, but Julia Davies is wonderful as his arch secretary. I'll be following this series slavishly.
Posted by adambowie at January 19, 2004 09:45 PM