MINISTER OF MISCHIEF
A love child, a libel case and a brazen lust for power... Hugh Laurie plays a devious MP in a riveting new drama
Let the Westminster guessing game begin. The cracking new political thriller by Sir David Hare, which will light up Sunday nights for the next four weeks, stars Hugh Laurie as a Tory government minister shrouded in secrets and rumours. For all Hare’s protests that Peter Laurence is a fictional figure, the familiar echoes of this complex, contradictory character’s many scandals will invite speculation as to who inspired his creation.
Laurence is a popular figure with a common touch and his own radio phone-in show. As the story begins, he has saved his career by winning a risky libel trial, successfully denying that he had been colluding with US firms to sell out the NHS.
Now, in an abrupt change of fortune, Laurence is set for promotion to a senior Cabinet post – perhaps even one of the great offices of state, should the Prime Minister, Dawn Ellison (Helen McCrory) see fit. So it couldn’t be worse timing for the political veteran to learn that his past has come back to haunt him – he’s been contacted by a woman claiming to be a love child he never knew he had.
Even more damaging for his reputation should the story get out, it turns out that she’s in jail – a resident of the troubled prison system that his own government is struggling to reform.
As for the libel case, it transpires that it may not be over after all: the firebrand reporter who lost in court is still convinced she can prove Laurence was lying and has a plan to do exactly that.
Will his charm and guile be enough for him to survive as the walls begin to close in?
Laurie reaches new heights here as a man whose cunning holds us rapt, whatever his sins, while McCrory (inset, with Olivia Vinall as private secretary Julia Blythe) channels her inner Maggie as the formidable PM.
The other marquee name is the award-winning playwright Hare: his story carries enough conviction for us to feel we’ve been eavesdropping on the corridors of power, while the dialogue can only be faulted for sounding so much more intelligent than most of what we hear from politicians these days...