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Brian And Maggie looks at the relationship between Queen guitarist Brian May, and his relationship with Anita Dobson which inspired Rod Stewart’s classic, Maggie May…
Nah… Anyhoo, this opens with some brief, but great interview clips, one being the epic battle between Jeremy Paxman and the then-Home Secretary Michael Howard on Newsnight, over a chap called Derek Lewis.
As per Wikipedia, he is a “former Director General of HM Prison Service, who was sacked in 1995 by Howard after a series of high-profile escapes by IRA prisoners. He had declined to suspend the governor of Parkhurst Prison after a mass escape, and alleged that Howard had threatened to overrule him to force the suspension.”
I’ll link it below, but it’s hilarious.
However, for this, the titular participants are Brian Walden (Steve Coogan – Joker: Folie À Deux) and Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter – This Is Going To Hurt), the former whose programmes were a little before my time of having interest in politics, while the latter ran the Tory party, because Prime Minister, and took away my milk when I was in junior school, hence the chant, “Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher!”
The difference between the two is that people paid tribute when Walden died in 2019, but no-one sane gave two hoots about Thatcher, and when she finally disappeared in 2013, a re-release of The Wizard Of Oz’s “Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead!” went back into the charts at No.1! Ok, the official charts claim No.2, but, we know… the same thing happened to The Sex Pistols with God Save The Queen.
To me, Brian Walden was best known for hosting ITV’s Weekend World between 1977 and 1986, which sounded like it had the oddest music for the theme. Many years later, when XFM Manchester was still playing some decent music, I heard a rather loud rock tune on the breakfast show while stuck in traffic, and then when the track’s coda came in, I thought, “I know that tune!”, but didn’t realise it was a song proper.
I was that many years old when I realised that the programme’s theme was Mountain’s Nantucket Sleighride. To that end, one of the station’s earlier presenters was the late, great Tony Wilson, who Coogan also played, in 24 Hour Party People. As with this programme, he doesn’t look anything like him, but he does get enough of the mannerisms across. Similar, Ms Walter doesn’t look like Thatcher, apart from the hairstyle, of course, but overall, it does work.
This drama takes in their many interviews over the time of her domination, first as an early guest in 1978, prior to her taking power in 1979, and the following year comes their second meeting in interview form. Events play out over their course, but by the time we reach their final interview in 1989, she considered him rather a friend… until then.
Brian and Maggie gets across how the amount of preparation he had to do before each interview was insane, using all sorts of charts which would make my head spin! Plus, how he rather went along with Thatcher until he got a backbone, sensing when her time in power was nearing an end, and stuck the verbal knife in, similar to how Chancellor Nigel Lawson did by resigning, being one of the reasons to end her reign of terror.
I won’t go into detail about how things play out, since that’s the point of watching the drama – aside from one element how everyone got rather sick of her and her party, privatising every last bit of government-owned companies, such as gas, water and railways, and giving tax cuts to the rich, but sod the poor – but while Brian And Maggie is very enjoyable, it’s not always easy to spot which MP in her cabinet is whom, although it’s amusing when she complains her cabinet are all ‘wet’.
Those who opposed her more hard-line policies became the “wets”, while her supporters were referred to as “dries”.
It does feel rather embarrassing that her 1983 Tory conference was attended by the likes of snooker legend Steve Davis, comedian Jimmy Tarbuck and the late, great Kenny Everett, the embarrassing part being that they were pro-Tory.
Still, it’s interesting to see when a picture with Thatcher and several cabinet ministers, including Michael Heseltine, is taken in 1981, given that he was on Monday’s Politics Live (expires Tues Feb 25th 2025), and is still lucid at 91!
As an aside, Brian’s son, Ben Walden, plays the Governor of the Bank of England.
Now, for Steve Coogan’s next trick, will he play BOTH Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howard? 😉
Thanks to our friends at Channel 4 for the screener prior to release.
Brian And Maggie concludes tomorrow night on Channel 4 at 9pm, and will be on All 4 after broadcast, but episode 1 is there now.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time: 45 minutes per episode (2 episodes)
Release date: January 29th 2025
Channel: Channel 4
Format: 1.78:1
Director: Stephen Frears
Producer: Dan Winch
Writer: James Graham
Music: Murray Gold
Cast:
Brian Walden: Steve Coogan
Margaret Thatcher: Harriet Walter
Vinay Ahmed: Karan Gill
Nigel Lawson: Ivan Kaye
Sue Richardson: Emma Sidi
David Cox: Tom Mothersdale
Ian Gow: Simon Paisley Day
Bernard Ingham: Paul Clayton
John Wakefield: Ross Armstrong
Geoffrey Howe: Paul Higgins
Governor of the Bank of England: Ben Walden
Veronique: Marcia Lecky
Alan Walters: Nick Sampson
Floor Manager: Oliver Devoti
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.