Steerpike Steerpike

At home with the Balls family

Do you recall The Politician’s Wife by Paula Milne? It was a TV drama that aired in the dying days of the Major government. Milne recognised that Major’s government was more Basic Instinct than ‘Back to Basics’, emphasising the toxicity, hypocrisy and general sordidness of the era. It was tremendous stuff.

So praise the Lord: Milne is back with a sequel. The Politician’s Husband gets underway this week on BBC2. The subject has set tongues wagging. Of whom was Milne thinking when setting her drama in the court of a grumpy and doomed prime minister, with leadership rumours swirling and one family destroyed by lust for power?

‘I would be disingenuous if said that was not in my mind’, Milne told a media crowd on Friday night when asked about the Miliband brothers. ‘There has to be a recognition factor for the audience.

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