The Long Walk to Finchley, a drama about Margaret Thatcher’s struggle to get a parliamentary constituency to fight before landing Finchley in 1959, was to have been aired on BBC4 this month. But the transmission has been deferred until later this year because the BBC is worried that the larky portrayal of Thatcher, played by Andrea Riseborough, might upset her. Would dear old Maggie really have a problem with the drama’s budding politician getting her nomination by revealing a bit of leg and using a sexy voice? asks Richard Brooks, before concluding: I think she’d be chuffed.
Instead, BBC4 will wait until it can run programmes based on archive footage on either side of the drama to "put it into context". Perhaps the Beeb is also "frit" – a term Thatcher favoured – because, next week, BBC4 is running a documentary in which Michael Portillo argues that she had a negative effect on her party after its 1997 defeat. Too much for the old girl to take?
