The Iron Lady

From the writer of Shame (Abi Morgan) and the director of Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd), the latest Meryl Streep showpiece of biographical impersonation is not a Marvel Comics property, mercifully, but instead a portrait of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who took that office, as the first woman ever to do so, in 1979. Un-hugged by mum upon getting into Oxford, young Maggie (Alexandra Roach) applied her coolly-reasoned rigidity to pulling herself up into the middle class, whereupon she wanted more than mere housewifery. Decades later she finds herself embodied by an excellent, empathetic Streep (even her sublingual groans seem authentic), alone with Alzheimer’s and unable to let go of her dead husband (Jim Broadbent). The in-between is rather a blur: Shrewdly framed as a series of demented reminiscences, with history reduced to a literal cacophony of bullet points, this should satisfy a certain conservative mindset. There’s no hint as to why Elvis Costello should ever have sang about dancing on her grave. Generally it’s hard to say how the English will feel about this, but don’t be surprised if they retaliate with Colin Firth in a homely effigy of Reagan.