Coalition is not just the story of the Tory-Lib-Dem love-in - its key players are smooth, powerful and even hot

 
Tory boys: David Cameron played by Mark Dexter, flanked by George Osborne (Sebastian Armesto) and William Hague (Alex Avery) (Picture: Channel 4)
Channel 4

Usually, Chancellors don’t make women feel funny. They might make them feel angry, tired or bored. But not flustered, hot under the collar, and a little shaken.

Then I watched Sebastian Armesto’s depiction of George Osborne in Channel 4 docudrama Coalition (9pm, tomorrow). It’s probably the performance in the programme that least resembles its reality; it’s also the most captivating. This isn’t Armesto’s fault, but he’s hot. So you are faced with an unsavoury reality: fancying George Osborne. It’s weird.

In his first substantial scene, the tousle-haired Tory is laying, fully suited, on his bed, and is awoken by David Cameron banging on the door. “What’s wrong with your hair?” Cameron asks, like a prefect at Eton. It’s the only moment Cameron is the top dog in their relationship. The rest of the time Osborne is calm, laconic, weary of being the voice of reason: he is so clearly convinced the party’s future means Number 10. He comes off as a supreme puppet master - the real George Osborne must be thrilled - and delivers some of the best lines of the piece: when the first whispers of the Coalition emerge, he purrs in Cameron’s ear, “People expect us to be ruthless. They’ll be seen as traitors.” When the details are finalised, Osborne smirks to a group of Lib-Dems, “I’ll go straight there. Good luck with your lot - government calls, gentlemen,” and then sashays off towards Downing Street, taking the confused hearts of Britain’s watching women with him.

“George was very helpful,” writer James Graham, who did long interviews with the key players in preparation for the show, told the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary last week. “It’s well known that he enjoys the cut-and-thrust of politics and he had a bit of a twinkle in his eye when he was telling me some of these stories.”

Will Osborne be watching on Saturday? If he is, it will be a trip down memory lane: the sombre text before the programme start informs us that “This drama portrays real events. It is based on extensive research and interviews with key people who were there. Some aspects have been devised … for characterisation.” It retells the dramatic week between the 2010 general election and the cloying rose garden love-in between David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The retelling is probably more dramatic than the events themselves - it is packaged slickly with dramatic pauses, Machiavellian smirks and swooping crescendos - but the events are true and the depictions truer.

Granted, Ed Balls might not like his depiction: his bit-turn, played by Nicholas Burns, provides the comedy of the piece. He’s laddish and indignant: after being admonished by a gruff Brown that he might have put the Lib-Dems off with poor body language, he brings a box of doughnuts to the next round of negotiations. “I’ll show them bad body language.”

Moving in: David Cameron (Mark Dexter), Nick Clegg (Bertie Carvel) and Gordon Brown (Ian Grieve) (Picture: Rory Mulvey)

A little clumsiness aside, this is, of course, the real draw of the political docudrama. You can go to Wikipedia for facts and chronology; some do, though only wonks really care about the minutiae. The punters - or voters - tune in to see fictional renderings of their politicians. It’s curiously captivating to watch an actor impersonate the Prime Minister: to see his mannerisms writ large, the cadences of his speech coming out of the mouth of an actor who looks very passably like the premier himself.

Mark Dexter gives a star turn as Cameron: “All he has is Brylcreem and a smile,” sneers Peter Mandelson (an arch Mark Gatiss, who makes his entrance out of the shadows ahead of the pre-election live debates to steal scene after scene). In fact, there’s more to Cameron than that: Dexter plays him as jocular, bullying and shamelessly true to Establishment type. When making overtures to Clegg, he remarks: “We’re not from all that far away, are we?” referring to their mutually cushty upbringings. “And Westminster isn’t a world apart from Eton.” Here’s an occasion on which Graham’s drama misses the mark: the comment really bludgeons you over the head with the duo’s wealth and connections. When you’re really on the inside, the currency of privilege is assumed.

Osborne the heartthrob aside (my pulse is still racing), it’s really Clegg’s story. Bertie Carvel, who plays the anguished Lib-Dem leader, really captures the earnest patter of Clegg’s speech; in shadows, he could actually be the (increasingly exhausted) Deputy PM. He plays Clegg with sufficient steel to hold the drama but without so much strength that you forget that this is a man who never really lived up to the pre-election hype (we’re reminded in the opening minutes of the programme that he was, at one point, leading the polls). Donald Sumpter is imperious as party elder Lord Ashdown: Clegg’s moral compass.

New role: David Cameron (played by Mark Dexter) in Number 10 (Picture: Rory Mulvey)

Labour is a motlier crew: Ian Grieve’s Brown is a little too clumsy and lumbering at points; at moments, he’s almost the bathetic buffoon. Chowing down on fast food, or being (literally) stroked into submission by Mandy in a meeting with Clegg before the game’s up. He gets the accent, though, and the physical embodiment - and also evokes sympathy, unlike any of the others.

“On May 7, Britain goes to the polls again”, reads text that flashes up at the end. Truth is usually stranger than fiction but there are few things stranger than watching your politicians played by actors.

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