Channel 4’s The Vote reviewed: ‘complex, acute, very funny and oddly moving’

He’s back on top form. James Graham has taken the unlikeliest setting, a polling station during the last hour of a general election, and turned it into a beautifully crafted comedy drama. The Vote at the Donmar was broadcast on Channel 4 last night at 8.30 p.m. We’re in a knife-edge London marginal constituency where a polling blunder has been uncovered.

A wizened pensioner voted twice by accident. Once in his brother’s name, once in his own. Panic stations. Democracy is threatened. Kirsty, an excitable teller, tries to even up the score by persuading a relative who hasn’t voted to cast his ballot under her discreet direction. This he does. But he votes for the wrong party. Now two extra votes are needed. Difficulties multiply. A drunkard takes his ballot paper to the pub to ponder his choice. That’s illegal. He’s hauled back by the cops who return his unused ballot paper. Problem solved. But the paper is sopping wet with spilt lager.