Television
In The Trial of Margaret Thatcher (Saturday, Channel 4) a scientifically selected jury of 250 found the former PM guilty by 57 per cent to 43 per cent - which, before anyone gets too excited, would have been enough to give her one of her customary landslides in the Commons. There was, however, a celebratory, carnival atmosphere to this 20th- anniversary programme which suggested that secretly even her disciples are relieved she is now well and truly out of it (cf George Walden's account of the Baroness's customary pre-prandial demeanour). Unfortunately, the gaiety ensured the proceedings were less than forensic. What Thatcher was being tried for, for example, was never really defined, although the word "betrayal" was banded about by the ex officio judge, Jon Snow.
Witnesses gave such abbreviated evidence that proceedings were closer to Just a Minute than a court. Some were clearly called upon in the wider interests of showbusiness and were then slagged off for the same reason. The left- leaning writers of Birds of a Feather, Marks and Gran, were accused by defence counsel Bruce Anderson of living in a "sitcom political world". Next up, he called Michael Dobbs, author of House of Cards, to paint a picture of a pre-Thatcherite Britain in which unions turned cancer patients away from hospitals. Gerald Kaufman, for the prosecution, congratulated him: "You are a brilliant writer of fiction and we have just heard how you do it."
The debate was reduced to a choice between Thatcher the Wealth-Creator and Thatcher the Mother of All Inequality. Edwina Currie argued that the myths were not mutually exclusive. Margaret, as she called her - much in the way Thatcher used to call Churchill "Winston" - did widen the gap between rich and poor, but the poor, in absolute terms, got richer, too. Since there was no Peter Jay around to tell us whether Currie was right (only a mad-looking geek described as Thatcher's favourite sociologist), it became evident that the point of the show was not argument but nostalgia, a chance to gaze again upon the cast of the era, from slick Derek Hatton to scruffy Len Murray, from pugnacious Eddie Shah to soppy-sinister Rabbi Jakobovits. Colourful days, but not ones to live through again.
From the trial of Scary Spice to the trials of Ginger Spice. Last May, the Spice Girls sentenced Geri Halliwell to an indeterminate period of solitary confinement in the open prison of fame for some unnamed transgression against Spice Law. The film-maker Molly Dineen, author of The Angel and The Ark, has long wanted to be the fly on the wall of a Rolling Stones' tour. Instead, the day after the split, she got the summons from Geri. Geri said she was "daring to bare". Perhaps this was the first mistake. Dineen customarily chooses inhospitable subjects from whom she charms and chisels access. This way round, it was suspiciously easy.
Whether it was Dineen or Halliwell who thought her life after Spice was worth a whole 90 minutes is another question (Wednesday, Channel 4). We got the point that she was lonely and mixed up in the first few seconds. Everyone said so. Even Geri. "Fame and money are such a test of character," she said, planning to deflect questions on her personal happiness by "going deep" on the reporters and querying what happiness constituted. Dineen's best sequence covered Halliwell's appointment as UN goodwill ambassador, an elevation that fleetingly brought Geri the illusion that, au fond, she was an altruist. It was a different Geri, however, who surfaced the next day, furious to learn that her family back home in Watford had forgotten to watch the beatification.
This was all brilliantly observed, but Dineen pushed her luck when she followed her prey into the loo on the day of Prince Charles's birthday concert. Geri was shouting to a small crowd of fans gathered below. Geri smugly felt they were responding to her as a "real person". Like the worst sort of candid friend, Dineen pointed out they had never even met her. By Dineen standards this dialogue looked contrived, intrusive and didactic. It also indicated that Dineen was taking too seriously Geri's earlier announcement that she was looking for a guru. Dineen, a recent mother, had got into the habit of offering Geri matronly advice along the lines of Be Thyself and Confront the Truth. In fact, Geri later explained, she had called on her mainly because she wanted company. In the end, Dineen got replaced by an affectionate canine from Battersea.
Dineen is best at making films about ordinary people who turn out, as Des Lynam would say, to be a bit special. With her Blair election broadcast and now this, she is managing to make extraordinary people mundane. This is a less worthwhile mission, and I judge from her obvious fascination with Halliwell's mother that she knows it. Mrs Halliwell, an office cleaner from Spain, was the most engaging character in the film, neurotically love-bombed by Geri but always saying the wrong thing. "All those windows to clean!" at her daughter's 18-room mansion, for example. "You looked like a star," she told her after the Charles concert. Geri, who has a deep phobia about her mother straying into any branch of showbusiness, including criticism, was furious. Misunderstanding, Spice Mum corrected herself. Um, she meant superstar.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the London "Evening Standard"
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