Belatedly catching up with the BBC's
Margaret on iPlayer. It wasn't the haircuts or the clothes that really characterised and dated the actors as politicos, it was their glasses. Huge great gig-lamps with clunkingly heavy frames and they were all wearing them, from John Sessions as a doleful Geoffrey Howe to Michael Maloney as a quietly manipulative John Major. It made it easier for the bespectacled to be convincing than, for example, Robert Hardy to make himself big and baggy and crumpled enough as Willie Whitelaw. Lindsey Duncan was compelling in the title role but just too beautiful and subtle for absolute verisimilitude.
