What you won’t learn from Channel 4’s Partygate drama

Partygate has morphed from a half-forgotten scandal into a new drama-documentary which airs on Channel 4 tomorrow night. This rehash of old news depicts Boris Johnson as an amiable tyrant, played by Jon Culshaw, who presides over a gang of chaotic law-breakers as they hold riotous parties in Downing Street at the height of lockdown. The fizz of topicality has vanished from this story which came to an end last year when Boris was forced to relinquish the keys of Number Ten. So viewers already know whodunnit, why he dunnit, and what happened after he dunnit. 

Still, the show has a decent stab at dramatising the nitty-gritty details. To create a sense of freshness, the script introduces us to a fictional intern, Grace, whose video diary follows her early days in Downing Street. Grace is a geeky misfit, a Cinderella figure (later seen tidying up after a lockdown party), who knows nobody in Number Ten and has very few contacts in London.