This Pathetic Parody Shines A Light On Blatant BBC Bias

Already there, An ambitious, philandering corrupt Troy minister

- Leo McKinstry

Judging by the overblown advance hype, the BBC must have thought it was on to a winner with its new political drama Roadkill. The creator is the renowned playwright Sir David Hare, one of the legends of the British theatre. The star is the brilliant Hugh Laurie, whose golden career encompasses roles as varied as a grumpy American doctor and a ruthless arms dealer.

But the show, broadcast on Sunday evenings, turns out to be a real clunker, not so much House of Cards as Stack of Clichés. Almost everything about it is so ill-judged that at times it feels like a parody of an outdated thriller.

The predictable plot revolves around the machinations of an ambitious, philandering, potentially corrupt Tory minister called Peter Laurence, played by Laurie. Laurence is not so much a character as a collection of nasty traits stitched together by socialist propagandists to create a stereotype of a populist, Right-wing villain. Equally flawed is Helen McCrory’s imperious Prime Minister, who comes across as a pantomime version of Margaret Thatcher.

OTHER acting in the programme is as ripe as mouldy ham, while the plot has more holes than a moth-eaten cardigan. The writing could hardly be more wooden, a surprise given that the director is Michael Keillor of the magnificent police procedural Line of Duty.