BBC Four has commissioned a “light-hearted and imaginative” film detailing Margaret Thatcher’s early political career.
Written by Tony Saint’ Margaret Thatcher – The Long Walk to Finchley’ focuses on her determination to get selected to a ‘winnable’ Tory seat and imagines what might have gone on behind the scenes during her ten–year struggle as she was rejected by a succession Tory selection committees finally being selected for Finchley and Friern Barnet, the seat that she would become identified with for the rest of her political career.
Andrea Riseborough who previously appeared in BBC Two’s Party Animals stars as Margaret Thatcher with Rory Kinnear (Mansfield Park) as husband Denis and Samuel West (Cambridge Spies) as fellow future PM Ted Heath.
The film is produced by Great Meadow Productions and is the company’s first wholly independent commission from the BBC. Their other recent credits include the award-winning Bradford Riots for Channel 4 and the critically acclaimed Messiah for the BBC.
Executive Producers Robert Cooper and Kate Triggs add: “Whatever your views about Margaret Thatcher, she changed the country we live in irrevocably. And yet she remains something of an enigma.”
“Although she is, arguably, the best known living Briton, we hardly know her as a person at all. Tony Saint’s witty, humorous and imaginative script portrays her as a living, breathing young woman up against that most conservative of all institutions – the British Tory Party.”
Filming begins in London in August.
