Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away. Before the opening titles, we’d already heard from Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and the late Henry Kissinger. We’d also seen the lines drawn up as to how its bold subtitle might be answered.

As Clinton put it, in 1945 a question emerged whose implications would dominate post-war US foreign policy: ‘Why didn’t we do more to try to prevent the transport of the Jews?’ The immediate response was the heartfelt yet potentially glib declaration: ‘Never again.’ But what would that actually mean in practice? Was it now America’s duty to ensure the world’s countries behaved themselves? Or is it dangerously arrogant to proclaim yourself – as several presidents have done – ‘the one indispensable nation’ in charge of monitoring all the others? And in any case, what would happen when the rhetoric of either position bumped up against pesky real events?

Over the next hour, and with seven parts still to go, these questions were given a thorough and intelligent airing.