IAN HYLAND

On last night’s telly

Brexit: The Uncivil War, Channel 4 ★★★★

Thanks to dramas such as Luther, Manhunt and Les Miserables, it had already been a pretty bleak start to the TV year.

Channel 4 upped the stakes last night. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a TV film that depressed me as much as this one did.

Of course, if you voted Leave there’s a chance you might have viewed it slightly differently.

That said, whichever box you marked in June 2016 there was no getting away from the fact that there was a huge amount of cynical manipulation and playing with people’s lives on both sides.

This film was clearly weighted in favour of Remainers though.

Not only did it focus heavily on the questionable social media tactics of Leave, it also presented Leave’s mastermind Dominic Cummings as some kind of tortured genius.

Whether Cummings was actually that way in real life is up for debate, but this brilliant portrayal by Benedict Cumberbatch — an actor who does

tortured genius better than anyone — did seem to offer Remainers another excuse for losing. He was certainly better at slogans.

Given the amount of screen time Cumberbatch had, it was no surprise that he was the standout performer in a fast-paced and dramatic two-hour movie, which felt like a 30-month horror film version of a My Facebook Year In Review.

Special mention, though, should go to former Corrie star Lee Boardman, who somehow made Brexit donor Arron Banks appear even more unappealing than Banks’s own TV appearances do.

Boris Johnson and the rest of the usual suspects were presented as one-dimensional panto villains.

The only difference being that usually when you laugh at panto villains the joke doesn’t end up being on you.