DECLINE AND FALL (PARTYGATE)

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We live in a culture of outrage.

Television and radio airwaves are filled with left and right wing commentators railing against their opponents.

If that wasn't enough, many newspapers, magazines, blogs and social media feeds also thrive on people expressing outrage.

Even coverage of sport has commentators looking for controversy.

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Buttons are pressed on certain issues, members of the public on phone-ins foam at the mouth and, as a result, faith in politicians, institutions, business and sport is dented.

Sometimes, though, politicians, business leaders, sports administrators and other institutions give their critics plenty of ammunition to drum up outrage.

Nowhere has this been better demonstrated in recent times than the UK's "Partygate scandal" which contributed to the downfall of Boris Johnson.

A report by civil servant Sue Gray revealed a culture of partying in Downing Street while the British Prime Minister and his government imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of COVID.

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Johnson aides were holding wine and cheese gatherings, office quizzes and karaoke sessions while UK citizens were being told to socially distance and in some cases were being fined for breaking the rules.

To many people, it seemed to be a classic example of those in power telling the public "do as I say, not as I do".

Now Channel 4 has weighed into the controversy with a Joseph Bullman penned and directed one-off drama, based closely on the Sue Gray report.

Fashioned around a fictional Downing Street aide, Georgie Henley's Darlington-born Grace, Bullman immediately weighs into the cult in the Conservative Party around Boris with her gushing about him delivering Brexit in an opening voiceover.

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Surrounded by a lot of Hooray Henrys - public schools alumni who are the sons and daughters of peers and work in the Private Office of the Prime Minister and press office - Grace is a little self-conscious of her more modest upbringing.

However she is quickly taken under the wing of Ophelia Lovibond's diary secretary Annabel, who describes herself as the Prime Minister's nanny.

Soon she is on the invite list for after work parties where Johnson aides consume loads of wine, take part in raucous karaoke and DJ sessions, get into altercations, dance on tables and vomit in the offices of Downing Street.

But as a child of a north of England red wall constituency whose Labour Party grip was broken by Johnson, she is also patronised.

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The Prime Minister, shot from behind but sporting the uncannily accurate voice of impressionist John Culshaw, is seen delivering humourous speeches at various events including leaving-dos and the infamous birthday party where it was claimed by one of his ministers that he was "ambushed with a cake".

There's even a rather grating address to aides where he quips about it being the "most unsocially distanced gathering" in the UK 

But as the drama wears on we see Grace becoming increasingly disturbed by the behaviour she is witnessing and the treatment of staff, including Phil Daniels' security guard Mickey Port when he tries to tone the partying down.

Bullman starkly contrasts the rhetoric from Number Ten about how the public must sacrifice contact with family and friends to control COVID with the wild behaviour of Johnson's aides - captioning each party it depicts with snippets of quotes from the Gray report.

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The drama is also peppered with news footage of each lockdown, of police moving people out of parks or enforcing lockdown laws by breaking up parties, of students and an Army veteran following the public health guidance and the letter of the law with socially distanced birthdays.

But what really hits home is the brief interviews with real life people as the narrative unfolds, where they tell how they lost loved ones to COVID, had the bare minimum attendance at their funerals or were fined for less raucous family gatherings.

In one case, a man confesses he is struggling to pay a £14,000 fine for breaking social gathering rules - the average fine for such cases is £6,000.

This sits rather uncomfortably with the £50 fines for Johnson, his partner Carrie Symonds and future Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for attending one gathering.

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During the broadcast of 'Partygate', some viewers vented on social media on Tuesday night about the behaviour depicted in Bullmore's drama and the attitudes of aides.

Scenes of aides spewing, snogging, fighting, spilling wine only fuelled the outrage.

Footage of the Downing Street press secretary Allegra Stratton whose leaked infamous mock press conference joking about the parties and her subsequent tearful resignation gets another airing in the drama.

But it is the regular appearance by two cleaners, played brilliantly by Fanny Bacaya and Gisele Mbalaga, who are left to clean up the mess the morning after every party (including bags of white powder), that only adds to the sense of there being contempt for ordinary people from those working in Downing Street.

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As a point of entry into an unlikeable and unwise bunch, Henley did a good job conveying Grace's increasing unease about what she was participating in - although she literally has her cake in the drama and eats it.

Lovibond, Tom Durant-Pritchard, High Skinner, Kimberley Nixon and Alice Orr-Ewing turn in appropriately giddy performances as the partying aides.

In addition to Culshaw, other actors portraying real life figures appear briefly in the drama, with Rebecca Humphries depicting Carrie Symonds, Alice Lowe and Naomi Battrick as the Number Ten advisers Shelley Williams-Walker and Cleo Watson, Anthony Calf as senior civil servant Sir Mark Sedwill and Craig Parkinson as communications director Lee Cain.

These are fun cameos but nothing more.

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With a running time of just 65 minutes, there's always going to be narrative sacrifices in a drama like this.

The then Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak's involvement in the infamous birthday cake gathering is only referred to in a caption but not depicted in a scene recreating it.

Tensions between Johnson's senior adviser Dominic Cummings and other members of the government, like Health Secretary Matt Hancock, are briefly alluded to.

Prime Minister Johnson's hospitalisation with COVID is ignored, as is the vaccine rollout.

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Broadcast in the week, though, that the Conservatives gathered in Manchester for what is likely to be the last party conference before the next General Election, 'Partygate' taps into the public anger that crystallised towards the end of Johnson's tenure as Prime Minister and then carried on during Liz Truss's eventful but brief spell in Number Ten last year.

It will not endear Channel 4 to those Conservatives like the former Culture Secretary and Johnson acolyte Nadine Dorries who want to cut public money for the channel and flog it off to private investors because they believe it is too woke and left wing.

As a political docudrama, 'Partygate' was an amusing and simultaneously appalling watch.

However as society moves on to the next source of outrage, it ultimately feels frothy and disposable.

('Partygate' was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on October 3, 2023)