The first episode of David Hare’s political drama Roadkill (18 October) opens with transport minister Peter Laurence emerging from the High Court after winning a libel case against a paper which claimed he was overheard in Washington discussing selling off the NHS.

Roadkill
BBC1

The first episode of David Hare’s political drama Roadkill (18 October) opens with transport minister Peter Laurence emerging from the High Court after winning a libel case against a paper which claimed he was overheard in Washington discussing selling off the NHS.

At the last minute, the journalist who wrote the story changed her testimony and the paper’s case crumbled. To the waiting press, Laurence gives a victory speech in which he sets out his credentials as a Tory anti-Tory, a moderniser, someone with proper working-class roots and down-to-earth honesty. At this point, three minutes in, the viewer will doubtless be thinking: he’s in for a precipitous fall.

Laurence (Hugh Laurie) is summoned to the prime minister, all knuckle-rapping and sugary steel, with the inevitable walnut-whip Tory hairdo, and hears that she is going to promote him. Her sidekick, Julia (“my eyes and ears”) looks on suspiciously. The PM has also asked for Laurence’s MI5 file: she’s looking for a weakness to prod. Laurence takes some time off to go on a radio phone-in where his matey joshing with the callers indicates that we have a dangerous populist to deal with. On the pavement outside his office a couple of rapturous fans asked for a selfie: “Isn’t he wonderful?” “I’m authentic,” says Laurence.

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