Television - Andrew Billen on Justice in Wonderland
Like their ancestors who once licensed printing presses, today's politicians still want to rule the airwaves. Gerald Kaufman imperiously demands the reinstatement of News at Ten. Chris Smith awards the BBC a little more licence fee but makes it clear that he will not allow it to raise cash from subscription television. The governors are nobbled and The Week in Westminster returns to Saturday mornings on Radio 4. Occasionally, however, the broadcasters turn on them. March has been a TV fest of the politically disgraced: a play about Neil Hamilton, an interview with Jeffrey Archer and continuing coverage of London's mayoral Punch and Judy Show, the story of men not corrupt in themselves but the chipped and damaged puppets of a disgraceful electoral fix.
Justice in Wonderland (Sunday, BBC2) was a re- enactment of last year's Hamilton v Al Fayed libel trial, the case that, as the Daily Star put it, took Mr Sleazy to his Kneesy. From the reams of transcripts, the adapters extracted two central images: Al Fayed's belief that he could hire MPs as if they were taxi drivers, and his counsel George Carman QC's fascination with Neil and Christine Hamilton's ability nightly to drink two bottles of vintage champagne during their now infamous sojourn at the Paris Ritz.
The Observer journalist John Sweeney, who deftly introduced the play, identified the trial as a return to the high noon of Thatcherism and, in an extra-textual embellishment, revisited that era's vocab by referring to it "in posh speak" as "pooh". The Hamiltons pooh-poohed the vintage pooh, but Carman, having caught out Neil Hamilton in a direct lie about ordering it, wanted to know from his wife if they were in the habit of drinking buckets. Christine Hamilton explained that alcohol was good for her back; but even if she had had it on prescription, the champagne would have damned them for Carman. The QC, an abstemious man we must assume, was passed the incorruptible refreshment of a packet of Lemsip in a green Harrods bag.
In an aria comparable to Vittoria's great speech of false testimony in Webster's The White Devil, Neil Hamilton boasted of his courage in facing "the most fearsome advocate in the law". As Carman, Kenneth Cranham was fearsome indeed: ascetic, sarcastic, moralising, witty, but merciless when Hamilton attempted jokes of his own. Charles Dance, who was either wearing a prosthetic nose or has turned into Ian Richardson, was superb as the ex-MP for Tatton, although he emphasised his arrogance rather than his desperation (I am told that in court he looked more shambolic). Their cross-examination scenes were as electric as Al Fayed's earlier evidence was leaden - the play missed the point of the Phoney Pharoah's tragedy: that he knows he is a comic figure and plays up to it.
When it worked, it worked; but Justice in Wonderland could not hope to be as powerful as last year's re-enactment of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Had the Hamilton jury more slavishly followed the judge's summing up and acquitted him, the trial would not have been half so funny. In the old joke, justice needs not only to be done but to be seen to be believed.
Jeffrey Archer also wants his day in court. He told Martin Bashir on last week's Tonight with Trevor McDonald (Thursdays, 10pm, ITV) that he planned to play an accused man in a play he has written. In an early rehearsal, we saw Archer showing off his erudition with a line to the jury about it being left to the porter to provide the "irony" in Macbeth. "That was rubbish," Archer concluded, which may be the most truthful thing he has ever said.
The eternally disappointing thing about interviews with exposed rogues is that they are always by then in ascent from their "desperate, fed-up, broken" lows. Archer has certainly regained all his acting skills. He held his hands up when asked about the Anglia shares and beamed like the most happily married man in the world at his wife's gag about his gift for inaccurate precis ("Well, I'd never argue with her!"). Schoolboyish, he said that Mary had been "cross" with him when the latest scandal broke. He would, he assured us, "continue to be a naive enthusiast" and risk "the periodical downfalls". But when Bashir tried to investigate the details of his current downfall, he took refuge in his "lawyer's advice" to stay mum. I am not sure that Tonight should have accepted these restrictions, particularly if they included a ban on mentioning his mistresses but not on him invoking the saintly Mary.
"I'd have loved to have beaten the bastard," London's lost leader said of Ken Livingstone. But Red Ken looked beaten already on BBC1's Question Time on Thursday 2 March, which, for once, actually felt like the vigorous public meeting it should always be. Frank Dobson won the battle of the sound bites with his "make my day" taunt to Ken; Livingstone blinked unhappily as he was reminded of his promises not to stand against the official Labour candidate. In the drama of this cockpit, he began to look like a politician who was going to be brought down by that rare trace element: his conscience. Normal cynicism was resumed by the Monday.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the London "Evening Standard"
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