Jeffrey Archer's 'First Among Equals' part 1, with Shane Whaley (#14)

Cory and Mark are joined by Shane Whaley of the Spybrary podcast this week. Shane has picked for us to watch First Among Equals, a prime time ITV political drama from the 1980s. As its episodes total up to 494 minutes, this time we're dipping into the first episode only. Take a listen to see if we - and you - want to watch the rest of the series. The series is based on the book by Jeffrey Archer, once a highly praised and successful novelist whose books were festooned with quotes praising his literary abilities. With the advantage of hindsight, however, we ask if Jeffrey Archer's work is best compared to Anthony Trollope or a McDonald's Filet-o-fish?

Watch the first episode of First Among Equals, and indeed the rest of the series, on YouTube here and second-hand copies of a DVD version are available from the usual places. The original novel is also widely available.

Next week we're interrupting our planned schedule and talking about David Hare's The Absence of War to mark its return to BBC iPlayer. Watch that before next Thursday's episode comes out here.

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Our theme tune is “Monkeys Spinning Monkeys” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) and licensed under the Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).