This is preposterous. A short thread. I think we should all agree that it is healthy for our recent and contemporary history to be represented in drama; otherwise everything is journalism. 1/ https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1339129182446641153

Why might that be? Because actors & writers & directors & artists can have insights into how things may have felt, take us imaginatively into rooms to which we ordinarily have no access, explore what what resonances events have, uncover the archetypal patterns being repeated 2/

This isn't really about detail but the more fundamental shape of events, the essential relationships, the rhythms of time and the dynamics of space and place and everything else that connects us all more directly with those events. 3/

Sometimes, to find those fundamental shapes, we have to imagine what happened in private spaces to complete the pattern; this is what Peter Morgan and team do in The Crown. It's also what David Hare did in Stuff Happens; it's what Shakespeare did too. 4/

Sometimes, too, in the effort to reveal that fundamental shape, the surface detail needs to be tidied, amended, changed. Sometimes, as in life, dramatists have to ignore the trees in favour of the wood. 5/

Did the historical Richard II stop the duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray seconds before it was due to begin? Probably not, but it sharply clarifies the dynamics of that triangular relationship to represent it that way. 6/

And, to pick a Peter Morgan example, he wrote The Deal in 2013, a TV movie about the contest between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership. It looked at the two men's friendship and their political partnership, thrown into crisis by the death of John Smith. 7/

They both thought they should be next Labour leader and this soured the relationship between the two men for a while. This was resolved (or partly resolved) by a famous summit between them at the Islington restaurant Granita (don't look for it, it's not there any more) 8/

This is a climactic moment in the TV movie. Michael Sheen's Blair sits, brightly eating dinner, while David Morrissey's Brown sits nursing a glass of water as they come to an agreement about their futures (an agreement that both men remembered differently afterwards!) 9/

Thing is, in the actual Granita meeting, Gordon Brown didn't drink water; apparently, he had a meal too (of course he did; they're in a restaurant). Does that undermine the truth of what Peter Morgan has written? No. 10/

It tells us something about the two men: Blair's confidence, appetite, friendliness; Brown's impatience, dourness, social awkwardness and the asymmetry between them. It is worth sacrificing detail for the bigger picture. A journalist can't do that but a playwright can & must. END