Coalition

Coalition was Channel 4's dramatisation of the formation of the Conservative / Lib Dem coalition government in 2010.  Starting with the first ever TV debate, it took viewers up to the point of the foundation of the government, and Cameron & Clegg's first joint press conference.

While it started well - the debate worked, I think - it soon drifted off into less comfortable territory.  The biggest problem was that the cast of characters was very big.  Normally with re-creations you have a few actors playing real figures, but in this almost all characters were current, living politicians.

So while you could take the 3 party leaders ('Cameron' looked very convincing for example), as more and more people started to appear it became a very distracting case of 'who is that meant to be?'.  I spent a few minutes wondering whether Alex Avery has shaved the top of his head to play William Hague (Google images suggests he had), and also to wonder where I'd seen 'Ed Balls' before (it was, of course Nicholas Burns, aka Nathan Barley).  It was a serious drama, but a few knowing gags like one about Chris Huhne's marital problems again broke the suspension of disbelief.

A few interesting points came out of the drama.  I'd forgotten how rude Gordon Brown could be, for example, but overall I felt that it would have been done far better as either a documentary, with talking heads, or a Comic Strip style take on the story, complete with action sequences, and over the top performances.  (They could have called it 'Inside Number 10')

However, like some of the voters, the programme makers chose to go a third way, and produce something that didn't really work very well, although you could see what the original intention was.  A bit like the coalition, in fact...