Stonehouse
ITV
★★★★★
I seem to be handing out five-star ratings like Smarties lately, but I can hardly mark down Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes just because their new drama is being broadcast during a TV golden patch. I thought Stonehouse, based on a famous true-life story, was a joy, chiefly thanks to Macfadyen’s witty, light on its feet performance as John Stonehouse, the former Labour minister who, after being blackmailed into spying on his country, and sleeping with his secretary, faked his own death Reggie Perrin-style and fled to Australia on a fake passport in the name of a dead constituent. Which makes Matt Hancock flying to Australia to eat sheep’s vagina look tame. I have seen all three episodes and it’s an absolute treat.
Macfadyen, here with a bouffant hairdo, looked as if he’d had to gain a few pounds for the role as Stonehouse waded into the sea in Miami. I wonder if it’s weird having your real wife (Hawes) play your screen wife (Barbara Stonehouse)? And vice versa? Especially when your husband has a naked woman writhing around on top of him to demonstrate the honeytrap in Prague in the late 1960s, when Stonehouse was secretly filmed committing adultery with his translator. If so, neither of them let it show.
Macfadyen’s talent for the comedic, which he executes so brilliantly as oily Tom in Succession, here gets to stretch its legs even more as the buffoonish, handsome, vain Stonehouse, who was tipped as a possible future party leader until his greed and his groin led to his downfall.
The frisky vibe of this series is similar to that of the excellent A Very English Scandal, in which Hugh Grant played Jeremy Thorpe, which is unsurprising since John Preston, its writer, is the author of the book A Very English Scandal. There also feels to be a sprinkle of The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe (about John Darwin, a man who more recently faked his own death), in that it’s a scandal dressed as farce.
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Macfadyen’s skill is in making a traitor, a liar and a philanderer almost endearing in his haplessness. Well-spoken Stonehouse is essentially a jovial berk. The scene in which his Czech handler (Igor Grabuzov) told him he was the most useless spy he had encountered, because he kept bringing them news that had already been on TV, or tedious “intel” about first-class stamps, was brilliantly done. Grabuzov’s face, a mix of disgust and pained boredom, was a picture.
Hawes’s role was small during the first episode, but it grows as Stonehouse’s deceit is uncovered. At the moment she is the perfect politician’s wifey, asking no hard questions even when suspicious, and keeping the home fires burning while wearing sensible skirts and blouses. Kevin McNally does a fine impression of Harold Wilson, and Emer Heatley is portraying Stonehouse’s secretary Sheila Buckley as naive but with inner steel. She said her shorthand was a bit “wopey” and that she had a “speech impediment” meaning she can’t pronounce the letter “r”.
If you ask me, Stonehouse is just the lifter we needed in the post-Christmas bloat. We’re only three days into 2023, but already, in Macfadyen and Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley, we have two strong contenders for performance of the year.
