NO, Prime Minister

Steve Coogan and Dame Harriet Walter recreate the explosive TV interview that led to Margaret Thatcher's downfall

- SEAN MARLAND

NEW DRAMA

Brian and Maggie Wednesday & Thursday, 9pm, C4 (box set, Channel 4)

On Sunday 29 October 1989, millions of TV viewers tuned in to watch journalist and broadcaster Brian Walden sit down with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for an interview that would change the course of British politics.

Coming just three days after the resignation of her Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, the television event proved to be the beginning of the end for the Conservative leader, who was forced from Downing Street little more than a year later.

The interview also proved the final act in Thatcher and Walden's friendship, which had blossomed during a host of on-screen discussions over the previous decade. However, when the interviewer pressed his guest over Lawson's resignation, Thatcher floundered and protested that he was talking 'nonsense' and being 'domineering. Afterwards, the pair would never speak again.

The story of that pivotal moment, and how it came about, is now being told in a two-part C4 drama, Brian and Maggie, starring Succession's Dame Harriet Walter as Britain's first female Prime Minister and I'm Alan Partridge's Steve Coogan as Labour MP-turned-ITV broadcaster Walden.