The Deal

David Morrissey and Michael Sheen play the brooding Scot and the smiley ex-lawyer from 1987 - when they are elected to parliament - to 1995 when they must decide which one of them runs for Labour leader.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

MARK LAWSON:
Does it work.

PAUL MORLEY:
I think it's close. I think Frear brings a lot of efficiency to it. He had a great time making it. When he was handed the script he said it would be a lot of fun. Everyone talks about the relationship between Blair and Brown as a marriage - here it's like a pop group, they meet, fall in love and in their surprise it turns out to be someone else, a little more powerful. Michael Sheen is incredible as Blair. And David Morrissey as Gordon Brown was quite exquisite. One thing was missing, I wanted a representation of John Prescott, then it would have been a bit like the Beatles, Blair was McCartney, Brown is Lennon, Mandelson is George Harrison, and I wanted Prescott as the Ringo Starr. There's a line when its mentioned how Peter Mandelson smells of vanilla, and that's the moment when I thought, "Yes, this is truly fantastic."

MARK LAWSON:
Elaine Showalter, they start off as equals and become less so dramatically. Are they treated as equals dramatically?

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
I don't think so. I thought it was a hatchet job on Tony Blair. And all the interviews given by Frears, talking about how it's equal and balanced and fair, and you can't decide between them, I think from every moment you're more and more lead to see Tony Blair as an ambition monkey of the decadent Islington classes. The dinner at Granita is wonderful. They have spun it around that event. It becomes a key event in contemporary history. When you see it, it's a scene of competitive eating. It requires your antagonist orders first, he orders rabbit and polenta, and Gordon Brown says he will have a glass of water. He won the meal. The winner is the one who eats less.

MARK LAWSON:
We have no idea if any of them ever said any of this at any point.

DEBORAH BULL:
That was my problem with it, it's on television and it becomes fact. Docu-drama, which is essentially what it is, takes fact and turns into drama. This takes something that is drama and factualises it. Because it's so inter-woven with the historical footage, you start to believe what you're seeing is the truth. And because the characters are so, David Morrissey I think is extraordinary as Brown. I couldn't think it wasn't Brown. One of the reasons one feels more sympathy or feels that Frears is supporting Brown is because the portrayal is accurate. The Blair character I thought was slightly caricatured. The features were sharper, it's like he was more extreme.

PAUL MORLEY:
It's because he's Paul McCartney.

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
He has the voice not the face.

PAUL MORLEY:
They never said what happened. In the end, it needs that fictionalisation, this may be the truth. I didn't really feel that there was a bias against one or other, and I didn't mind there was a backwards look at how Blair was, because he kind of deserved it.

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
If you think he deserved it, maybe you see it as even handed, I think very much it's slanted and the archival footage gives it the fake air of credibility and docu-drama.

MARK LAWSON:
The matching of archive is the best I've seen. Is there a moral issue in putting imagined dialogue in the mouth of a serving Prime Minister.

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
I think so, absolutely, I think this is a political act. And the intervention of releasing it at this moment, the day of the Brent East by-election, all of this is extremely well timed and I think calculated. I don't think it was an innocent production.