Alan Clark is a junior minister in the Thatcher government: irreverent, accident-prone and indiscreet. He wants to move up the slippery pole but lacks the necessary energy or cunning or self-belief. Only when the administration enters terminal decline can he rise to a higher station as others slip rapidly down the pole. Bureaucrats consider him a fool; he alternately lusts after (the females) and loathes them. John Hurt gets this character very well and Jenny Agutter plays his long-suffering wife with a nice mixture of brave grins and maternal snarls. What's missing is a dramatic context for Clark's monologues/thought bubbles. The viewer is rushed through a series of political accidents and incidents in which it is often hard to know or remember who is who and what is what. Too often, we are expected to be satisfied with the Clark witticisms without being given a proper understanding of what it is he's being witty about. The flatness to the look of the series and the metronomic directorial pacing prevent us from fully engaging with the larger story of a government willing to accommodate someone like Alan Clark.
Review of The Alan Clark Diaries
