Edward Heath

Edward Heath arrives at Number 10 as a bachelor technocrat, more comfortable with policy papers and his beloved sailing than with people. Stiff, humourless and quietly proud, he treats the Palace's traditions with polite impatience, more interested in modernising Britain than in charming anyone, including the Queen.

Michael Maloney plays Heath as a man armoured in awkwardness, all clipped vowels and unreadable pauses, which makes his rare flashes of vulnerability land hard. The show uses his social discomfort as a study in a certain kind of Englishman: dutiful, brilliant, and hopeless at being liked.