Thatcher, the film

In a belated attempt at balance, last night's BBC2 drama doc on Margaret Thatcher was extremely kind to the woman, often preferring to show Thatcher as a put-upon wife and mother.

Only once, and more than half way into the show, did we see a flavour of the iron lady, the vicious ideologue, the poisonous and ego-driven destroyer of comfortable consensus, flicker.

There might be a continuing admiration for Thatcher's conviction, but less of a recognition that much of this came from a narrow determination to destroy her political opponents, which inevitably meant harming the interests of the millions of people that supported them.