This first episode covers Thatcher’s rise to power, the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, and the Falklands War, with little controversy over its well-moderate nuclear program. Moore argues that the couple had the vision and time in power to imagine the end of the Cold War that lasted more than 30 years and which most world leaders saw as something they had to accept, rather than try to change. Reagan and Thatcher were devoted Cold War warriors, Moore suggests, who worked together to resist the Soviet Union, thus changing the course of history. “They saw the beginning of the end of the Cold War, as the world emerged from the shadow of the nuclear Armageddon,” he told a television audience still facing a 24-hour East-West tide of shadow and the shadow of the nuclear Armageddon. Maybe the documentary was made last summer. Thatcher’s steely image as an “Iron Lady” actually came from a Soviet newspaper, according to Malcolm Rifkind, who first served under Thatcher as a junior foreign minister and is one of many interviewees here. While moving the program away from the nuclear threat may seem horribly outdated, it’s not a great time to revisit the history of the 1980s, especially as Moore looks at US sanctions on a gas pipeline. Siberia and the divided response to it in Europe. But this is a movie that falls in love with its themes. While last week’s Channel 4 documentary on the Falkland Islands used confidential access to uncover revelations about the conflict, this documentary does nothing but admire Reagan and Thatcher. It’s almost completely out of the question, except for Bernard Ingham, Thatcher’s chief press secretary, who bluntly admitted that the first years of her term were “terrible” and Moore explaining that immediately after her first election, there was a sense that she would withstand only one condition. Otherwise, almost every respondent seems to be in awe of its savagery and irreconcilable nature. Reagan also escapes, with the documentary claiming that there was a perception that he was “very acting”, mindless at first, before his communicative talents began to dazzle. There are some attempts at a relaxed psychoanalysis of what Reagan and Thatcher saw in each other. Reagan, apparently, was close to his mother and attracted to “compelling women”, while Thatcher “wanted to look up at a man; she wanted to admire a man”. A talking head suggests they were two lonely pilots, but once they found them, “they were never alone again.” Hmm. There have been a number of great political and historical documentaries on the BBC over the last two years, from Once Upon a Time in Iraq to Blair & Brown: The New Labor Revolution, but this is much more comfortable and much less exploratory. This is a traditional documentary full to the brim with the people who were there. Unsurprisingly, given his decades in journalism and previous biographies, Moore has access to those inside, and many of the contributors were at the table, or at least hovering very close to him, at critical moments. Thatcher and Reagan’s friendship and political relationship. He often greets the interviewees in a familiar tone. he is a man who makes the most of his relationships. It’s the kind of sober series that serves an educational purpose, as a point, and if you wanted fireworks and melodrama for a rogue leader who fell for insults, then you would be watching the Peaky Blinders final on BBC One. But as a result of his traditional approach, I found myself under the influence of what I call the “Cunk effect”, which overshadows documentaries like this. Every time a presenter appears walking down a street as if he does not know the camera, or takes a moment to think, the camera remains on his thinking face, I vaguely wonder when a voice from Diane Morgan is about to ring, giving it to us. Complete Philomena Cunk Experience. This is a very logical documentary about that, of course. But I would love to see it.
