Stonehouse

In the end, you pine for something (anything) dredged up from the oily antihero’s childhood or sexuality; imagine what (the living) Stephen Poliakoff or (the very late) Dennis Potter might have done with such a real-life tragicomedy. At least Macfadyen’s minutely calibrated performance—at once transparent and guarded—makes a selfish cipher’s rise and fall (and rise) enjoyable.

Stonehouse really delivers a drama of depth, centered around someone with genuine failings, who eventually pays the price. It may lean towards tragi-comedy to a degree, but in the end, there is a sense of redemption which audiences will appreciate.

Macfadyen is so good at characters like this – hubristic, duplicitous and ridiculous – that it is a treat to watch him try to scheme and bluff his way through Stonehouse’s misadventures.

The tone is spot-on, tongue-in-cheek and cheeky.

Perfectly serviceable as an easy one-day binge, even if it brings nothing new to the genre. Unsurprisingly, Hawes and Macfadyen are an unbeatable duo, and if nothing else, the series serves as an easy, post-Christmas watch with your grandparents, in a dry time before TV truly begins to kick off for the year.

Matthew Macfadyen is quite good as the somewhat vapid, wholly incompetent John Stonehouse. The rest of Stonehouse feels like it’s a bit light and trivial, but it wisely puts Macfadyen front and center in just about every scene.

There’s a winning, Pink Panther-esque lightness to this relentless farce, but it didn’t engage me as much as the Thorpe drama.

Stonehouse’s fate is hard to better as an example of that old adage about weaving tangled webs and practicing to deceive. I only wished I had been made to care more for any of those involved.