Crossing The Floor

Neil stars in this Guy Jenkin's production (one half of the DTDD team), a companion piece to his earlier "A Very Open Prison". It stars Tom Wilkinson as a completely fictional Home Secretary who is chronically incompetent and has no moral precepts to speak of. The Conservative Party has a majority of only one vote and look unlikely to be re-elected. Seeing which way the wind is blowing, he tries to save his political skin by crossing the floor of the House and joining the Labour Party. Things do not go smoothly....

Broadcast right after the Labour Party Conference...:-)

This production, which took just three months to make, stirred up the sensitive spin-doctors of New Labour before they even saw it. Neil plays the fictional New Labour leader Tom Peel as a creation of the media-groomers and is described as "young, charismatic, handsome and only very slightly demented". There is a plain-speaking deputy leader of the old school and a devious spin-doctor Clive Colville. Mind you the Tories don't fair much better...the Home Secretary is a man of no principles with a mistress, and the dithering Conservative leader is described as "Mr Personality-bypass".

The overwhelming view was that it was masterly...brilliantly funny, witty and fast-paced. Wonderfully cynical. Neil very nearly stole the show from Tom Wilkinson. The Labour Party didn't say a word after its broadcast after all their earlier belly-aching. The Daily Mail thought it too pro-Labour so it must have been good :-) Must be BAFTA-nominated!

This was broadcast during a heavenly week for us Neil fans- he was on the TV three times (Rhodes, Drop The Dead Donkey and this).

Neil is a proud socialist and life-long Labour supporter, and even appeared in a Labour Party Political Broadcast in 1994.

Starring


Written and Directed by Guy Jenkin

Filmed July 1996, broadcast on BBC2 as part of the Screen Two series, on 5th October 1996 9.30pm. Running time 70 minutes.

return to Neil Pearson home page
This is maintained by Carole Goble
Email any corrections or information to carole@cs.man.ac.uk.
Created 1st November 1996