Making Mischief: Peter Kosminsky, Stephen Frears and British Television Docudrama

Abstract

This article compares and contrasts the ways in which two British television drama directors, Stephen Frears and Peter Kosminsky, critique political power in films screened as part of the BFI's 2009 ‘Radical Television Drama’ season. Frears’ The Deal (2003) and Kosminsky's The Government Inspector (2005) are films concerned with New Labour and its politics, and both take a provocative line towards its culture and policies. The Deal examines the party's rise to power in the 1990s, focusing on the relationship and rivalry for the party leadership between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The Government Inspector dramatises New Labour's behaviour during the critical historical period following the September 11 attack on New York, focusing in particular on the controversial case of the arms inspector, the late Dr David Kelly. The article analyses the films as docudrama, arguing that the form has raised its cultural profile over the past 20 years. Contemporary reviewing of the two films is used to throw light on wider debates about docudrama, including the notion of ‘blurred boundaries’ between drama and documentary. The analysis of key scenes from the two films contends that there are more similarities than differences in the approaches taken by the two directors. Docudramas like these, the article concludes, have an active role to play in oppositional politics.

Rethinking Docudrama and its Origins From Radio and Film to Streaming Media

“…For critics of docudrama, however, the practice of fictionalization or dramatization only increases the format’s potential for deception. In Derek Paget’s words, “acting with facts involves manipulation, for inevitably affects must be sought” (Paget 2013, 182). Steven Lipkin connects this critique to docudrama’s reliance on a particular form of fictionalization—melodrama.…”

“…For example, Marita Sturken argues that angry critical responses to Oliver Stone’s 1991 docudrama JFK tell us less about fear of audience manipulation and more about alarm over the film’s undermining of the notion that “history can be told outside of fantasy” (Sturken 1997, 79). By exploring the “porous boundaries between documentary and drama,” docudramas have the potential to disrupt the idea the facts can neatly be separated from cultural and political fiction (Paget 2013, 183).…”

Media resonance and conflicting memories: Historical event movies as conflict zone

“…This genre seems to be sufficiently suitable for generating and mediating public memory debates by transforming television from a medium of information and representation into an active agent bridging diverse spheres: the realm of information and the historical imaginary, the factual and the fictional, the representation and the active intervention, the mediation and the triggering of memory processes. As Paget (2013) emphasizes, 'Docudrama has acquired a raised level of importance in the current political and cultural ecology' (p. 173). First, this is a result of its references to social, political and historical issues, but also of its context because it 'does not exist in a vacuum but is found in a complicated social, political, and economic environment' (Hoffer et al, 1985: 182).…”

“…In doing so, it generates spaces for debating conflicting perceptions of past and present. The medium’s specifics, its multi-layered, intertwined but also elliptical and asymmetrical programme structure, is therefore of crucial importance (Paget, 2013: 147).…”

Melodrama, celebrity, The Queen

“…Although The Deal does employ scenes of people watching television to bridge the two, it also cuts directly between them with no ostensible breach of image quality or narrative continuity. 10 Signifi cantly the deceased politician in the archive sequence of the funeral, the Scottish Labour leader John Smith, is portrayed earlier by actor Frank Kelly. Conversely Diana -even in the opening of The Queen when she is still alive -is represented only by actuality footage.…”