Political Fictions: political drama on screen and on the page

Top author and newsletter writer Sam Freedman joins us this week to talk about The Thick of It special episodes 'Rise of the Nutters' and 'Spinners and Losers'.

We talk about how prescient the episodes are about both the rise of Gordon Brown and the Conservative rebranding under David Cameron, top political advice about how you can ensure you get a good desk in an office, Cory gets massively distracted by the cricket, and we end by...

Mark and Cory conclude their discussion of the classic TV series State of Play. Mark reports back on his correspondence with a cast member and also auditions for a role as a defence counsel, whilst they also talk about which elements of the plot remain realistic today and which are complete MacGuffins.

The Guardian article Cory refers to can be read here and the previous podcast episode, covering State of Play episode 1, ...

Mark and Cory begin their two-part series on the classic TV series State of Play by discussing episode one. It begins with Mark recoiling in horror at the low score Cory intends to give it, almost causing an irreparable rift in Political Fictions Towers. Thankfully, they manage to repair the relationship by talking about what the show tells us about politics in the early 2000s, praise the excellent cast (especially those who are ab...

Mark and Cory discuss The Lives of Others, a modern classic about Stasi surveillance in 1980s East Germany. They start off talking about how to cope with a terrible dictatorship and how the film is about the power of art. However, they quickly get sidetracked with some suspicious behaviour of the Stasi officers including keeping bottles of tomato sauce in the sink and drawing floorplans of flats a little too quickly.

(A note of cau...

Mark and Cory talk about a giant of American political drama for the first time this week, as they tackle The West Wing. They talk about Let Bartlet Be Bartlet, the nineteenth episode of series one. In it, Mark wonders if The West Wing is actually the epitome of the "Boris Johnson school of politics", Cory outmanoeuvres Mark into confirming we will record a Christmas Special about Love, Actually and they debate whether the central ...

Mark and Cory talk about Armando Iannucci's 2017 black comedy The Death of Stalin. You can watch the film for its exploration of the nature of evil, think about whether the license that is taken with the truth is completely appropriate, or just wait for the amazing memes to appear on screen. 

The Guardian article on the film's accuracy which Cory mentions can be found here, whilst the academic critique that Mark was looking fo...

Our normal programme is interrupted with an emergency episode!

David Hare's play about a fictionalised version of the 1992 general election, The Absence of War, is on BBC iPlayer for a limited period. So before it goes, Mark and Cory talk about it with the former leader of Birmingham City Council, John Cotton.

They discuss the reasons Labour lost the 1992 election, whether the play has the right lessons about how to be successful i...

Cory and Mark are joined by Shane Whaley of the Spybrary podcast this week. Shane has picked for us to watch First Among Equals, a prime time ITV political drama from the 1980s. As its episodes total up to 494 minutes, this time we're dipping into the first episode only. Take a listen to see if we - and you - want to watch the rest of the series. The series is based on the book by Jeffrey Archer, once a highly p...

Mark and Cory are joined by Elinor Taylor for our first book! It is Ellen Wilkinson’s The Division Bell Mystery, a political thriller disguised as a golden age detective story. It is written by one of the country's first female MPs and is full of convincing and vivid political detail about what it is like being a bag carrier for an important minister. The plot's setting is accurate right down to some key architectural detail ...

Aidan Byrne joins Mark and Cory to watch the classic Mr Smith Goes to Washington. It's a film full of shameless emotional manipulation, especially from some of the children in it. They marvel at the performances of Jimmy Stewart, Claude Rains and especially Jean Arthur, wonder if this film has an anti-FDR message, and Mark takes handwriting experts to task.

You can find Aidan on Blue Sky as Plashing Vole.

Next time, we're reading E...

To coincide with the men's football World Cup, Mark and Cory talk about the 2006 Iranian film Offside, about a group of Iranian women who disguise themselves as men to sneak into a stadium. Mark gets to deploy some football knowledge, they discuss how the film isn't a great advert for national service and ponder the symbolism of Iranian toilet graffiti.

You can view Offside on IMDb here.

Next time, we're watching the classic M...

To mark ten years since the Brexit referendum, Cory and Mark talk about James Graham's TV movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Brexit: The Uncivil War. They talk about the ability of Mark Gatiss to chew scenery without actually being on screen, how the story the film tells of how Leave won has aged rather badly, and Cory has a rant about the most shambolic doorknocking encounter he's ever seen. 

You can view Brexit: The Uncivi...

Mark and Cory talk about the O.G. of British Political Sitcoms: Yes, Minister. They marvel at the genial Machiavellian genius that is Jim Hacker exploiting the British sausage to win a leadership contest, explain why this episode is a good guide for would-be leadership contenders, and lay it on a bit thick with their marmalade discussion.

If you're in the UK then you can watch this on BBC iPlayer.

Next time, we're watching Bre...

In a scheduling choice completely unconnected to any contemporary political events, Mark and Cory talk about the 2004 Danish film full of leadership plotting, King's Game. This is a proper conspiracy thriller, where even the children are Machiavellian geniuses. They question whether it really makes sense for plotters to document their evil schemes in such meticulous detail, bemoan the bad use of political polling in the f...

Cory and Mark talk about the political film that's probably most likely to be accidentally bought on Amazon: Pablo Larrain's No. It's about a referendum, and one with several parallels with the Brexit vote. Mark fact checks Cory on a number of occasions, they discuss how successful campaigns always seem to have three word slogans, and chew over the significance of a scene involving baguettes.

You can view the IMDb page for No ...

Mark and Cory talk about Scandi Ballot Box dramas for the first time. They discuss the Borgen episode in which there are revelations about how Greenland is being used for CIA rendition programmes. They talk about whether photogenic politicians giving inspirational speeches is all that’s needed to solve the world’s problems, the difficulty of writing political fictions with Donald Trump in the White House, and Mark gets ...

Mark and Cory talk about All The President’s Men, which was released 50 years ago this month.

Mark gets to do his rant about how this film is basically Raiders of the Lost Ark, we ponder whether it’s got the most realistic rubbish of any movie, get very excited about a door and explain why the film presents Queen Elizabeth as launching a bid for absolute rule.

You can listen to Slate’s Slow Burn series o...

Mark and Cory talk about political TV for the first time, and there's nowhere better to start than The Thick of It. After rewatching the first series, they talk about which fictional policy proposals ended up becoming reality, why it's important that focus groups thought Keir Starmer was an eagle, and given that Malcolm Tucker keeps screwing everything up perhaps the secret genius behind the British Government is actually Terri Cov...