A controversial BBC drama that hasn’t been seen on screens since it first aired more than 20 years ago is returning.
The Project was a two-part 2002 TV drama directed by Peter Kosminsky from a script by Leigh Jackson.
It starred Matthew Macfadyen, Naomie Harris and Paloma Baeza and followed the lives of a group of young Labour party activists from their final days of university to Westminster’s corridors of power.
It tracked the developments in the Labour Party and its progress into Blairism, from the party’s failure to win the 1992 General Election through its election victory landslide in 1997 to its re-election victory four years later.
The drama, based on interviews with 120 advisers and MPs, also supposedly fictionalised real events and had been created in response to Alistair Campbell and New Labour’s ‘dirty tricks’.
At the time the series allegedly ‘incurred the wrath of Campbell’ and has not aired or been available to stream in the subsequent 22 years.
However, the BBC has now agreed to air it again on BBC Four and make it available to stream on iPlayer after Kosminsky ‘persuaded the corporation that the story had new relevance following Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory in July’.
He told the i paper: ‘It’s the first time The Project has been broadcast since 2002 or even seen. But it’s genuinely a piece that turns out to have extraordinarily relevant elements to the current situation.
‘Alastair Campbell’s team wrote a letter, which I have seen, asking people not to co-operate. But a large number of people did.
‘Was Matthew Macfadyen’s spin doctor inspired by Derek Draper? (Peter Mandelson’s former adviser who died this year from complications arising from Covid). I couldn’t possibly comment but I could see why you would say that,’ he added.
The director also said he would like to reboot the series for the Starmer era.
After rewatching The Project, Kosminsky said he was ‘shocked by the coincidence of the situation’ seeing Labour come to power ‘after a long, frustrating period of opposition with high hopes but also announcing that it would stick to Tory spending limits’.
In one scene, prior to the 1997 election, Matthew’s character Paul discovered a Tory cabinet minister was having an affair and searched dustbins for incriminating letters, which Kosminsky said actually happened despite the real affair never being made public.
Reflecting on the series, he said it was ‘brave’ for the national broadcaster to commission the series and retransmit it now.
‘If somebody said, “We’d like you to write the story of these two people 20 years on”, I’d take it very seriously. Whatever happened to Maggie and Paul, we’d have to see if anyone thinks that’s an interesting thing to do,’ he added.
However, he questioned whether The Project could get made today due to a lack of funding for British public broadcasters.
Since The Project, Kosminsky has gone on to direct other programmes including Wolf Hall, The State and The Undeclared War.
He is currently working on a series about the 2017 Grenfell tower fire.
Metro.co.uk has contacted representatives for Alastair Campbell for comment.
The Project, introduced by Peter Kosminsky, will air on Sunday September 15 at 10pm on BBC Four and will be streaming on BBC iPlayer.
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