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Originally shown as part of a season of programmes on Margaret Thatcher on BBC4, The Long Walk to Finchley presents a very different view of one of British politics most divisive figures. Here we see her not as the strident leader of the 1980s, but as an underdog, in her early years as a prospective Parliamentary candidate. Trying to gain election to Parliament in the 1950s, she is the victim of the establishment, the old boy network, and most especially of prejudice against her as a woman. The film gets across very well her tenacity in fighting for constituency after constituency before finally being selected for the safe seat of Finchley.

Tony Saint's script is actually surprisingly light hearted, full of in-jokes and random innuendo, some of which is quite funny. There are many sly references to future events in Thatcher's life - about to dance with Ted Heath, her predecessor as Conservative leader in the 1970s, she says "You Lead, I'll follow"; Mark Thatcher as a boy says to his mother "Can I go to Africa one day? I won't cause any trouble" (a reference to his becoming lost in the desert in the 1980s); Thatcher to a French waiter "I want a refund; I want my money back!" (EU rebate), etc.

The performances are generally good, especially Andrea Riseborough who successfully captures some of Thatcher's mannerisms and especially her speech, without ever sounded like a straightforward impersonation. More surprisingly, she also captures Thatcher's flirtiness as a young woman, and presents her quite sympathetically. Rory Kinnear's successfully suggest Denis Thatcher's long-suffering nature, while Samuel West is very good as Edward Heath, capturing his essential awkwardness and unsociability. Heath is seen uncomfortably standing by while Thatcher grabs the limelight during the election, or struggling to make small talk while she wins over a luncheon club meeting. The film is quite mischievous in suggesting Thatcher propositioned Heath for, we assume, some kind of political or actual marriage. But there's no evidence for this and it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Like Thatcher, Heath wasn't part of the establishment and he isn't portrayed entirely unsympathetically here, although the script does get some laughs at his expense. After Heath likens a political party to an orchestra and suggests that all elements should work together (implying that Thatcher is too dominant), one of the luncheon club ladies asks the eternal bachelor innocently, "Is that why you prefer playing with your organ alone, Mr Heath?"

The film caused a bit of controversy before it was even finished because Thatcher was apparently going to deploy the F word at one point, in frustration at not being selected for Parliament. In the end she says "Damn the establishment", rather than anything stronger, which is a wise choice. A woman of Thatcher's "respectable" middle class methodist background probably wouldn't have even heard such language in the '50s, but this is something that has cropped up in other recent BBC dramas, including BBC4's The Curse of Steptoe, where period characters don't always use period language.

The Long Walk to Finchley is actually quite entertaining, with the 1950s world of constituency meetings, chaps with pipes, open top sports cars and smoky back rooms, quite successfully evoked. The random jokes can be quite funny (even the title is a sly political reference). But it can be most easily recommended to those with a rough knowledge of, and interest in, British politics of the last 40 years or so.

Somewhere on Leave is one of a serious of now-forgotten British comedies from the 1940s, starring Frank Randle, Harry Korris and Robbie Vincent. The series began with Somewhere in England in 1940 and ran until 1949 with Somewhere in Camp, Somewhere on Leave, Somewhere in Civvies and Somewhere in Politics. Although reasonably popular at the time, these films were scrappily made and probably don't hold much appeal beyond nostalgia for most viewers. As a result, they are very very rarely shown on television, unlike the contemporary films of, say, Will Hay or George Formby.

You might say these films have worn badly, but on the evidence available, they were never much good to begin with. Somewhere on Leave features the ageing stars as unlikely recruits in the army, getting involved in various slapstick sequences involving horses, a piano, a trampoline, etc, as well as the expected run-ins with the regiment's sergeant major. There are also a couple of irrelevant song and dance sequences, the opportunity for the actors to play a scene in drag, and the obligatory comedy drunk scene.

The writers intercut the comic scenes with a stilted romance between the two young leads, and even manage to shoehorn a propaganda message into the film about the breaking down of class barriers. There are a couple of old gags which almost work, but they are usually let down by the poor delivery and ham-fisted direction. The director (John E. Blakeley) has a penchant for placing his camera so that the actors are looking almost directly into it when they are supposed to be talking to each other, making the dialogue scenes even more stilted than they already are. I've seen some bad films over the years, but the opening scenes, between Toni Lupino and her friend, contain probably the worst acting I've ever seen on film. The actors are extraordinarily stilted, as they talk about Lupino's parent's death in an air raid, as if they are discussing which hat to wear tonight. The acting is bad enough to make it a strong contender for the most unintentionally funny scene in film history.

Running this scene a close second is one involving an anti-aircraft battery. The guns are shown shooting down a German bomber - cut to a shot of an open-cockpit First World War biplane being hit! In the next shot, the plane is a World War Two bomber again. You would think a 1942 audience would know the difference between a wood and string built 1915 biplane and a WWII bomber, but it's indicative of the film makers contempt for the audience, as if they think they'll accept any old rubbish.

Its tempting to make allowances and put the film's ineptitude down to the difficulties producing films in wartime. But then, the British industry also produced Thunder Rock, Colonel Blimp, Went the Day Well? and In Which We Serve within a year of this film, proving this film is more of an aberration than anything.

The fact that several reviews have now appeared for this film on IMDb suggests that the other viewers took the same opportunity to watch this as I did, on a very rare BBC2 showing. On this evidence, however, its easy to see why its shown so rarely, and I can't imagine there's much danger of another airing for quite a long time.

British Film Forever is the BBC's flagship series on British cinema as part of its "Summer of British Film" season. While the season is a good excuse to show some lesser known films, this accompanying series is a bit of a disappointment.

For a series of seven episodes averaging around 90 minutes each, there's not all that much information being imparted. The selection of interviewees (mostly actors, including Michael Caine, Helen Mirren and Bob Hoskins) puts this above the average clip show, but they all cover well trodden ground and audiences are unlikely to learn much unless they are completely new to the subject. By later episodes, not very recognisable actors and comedians start to creep in as well. Interviewees tend to say things like "it was totally new" "it was a breath of fresh air" etc, but isn't all that illuminating for the audience without understanding the context of what/how/why something was new or how it compared to its contemporaries.

The series also has an irritating habit of starting with more recent films and working its way back. This may be an attempt to make it more appealing to viewers, but it hampers any attempt to place the films in context, or to show how a genre developed. The episode on thrillers, for example, starts with The Long Good Friday in 1980 - more than 70 years after the first British film thriller, while the period drama episode also starts in the 1980s, at least 50 years after British cinema became strongly associated with the genre. It does eventually get around to the earlier films, and sometimes, in the case of Bond or Get Carter, places them into a sociological context. But the films are often not placed into a cinematic context, and are rarely compared to American or European cinema This is difficult anyway when the programme tends to just flit from one film to another in no particular order.

There's also something wrong with the voice-over by Jessica Stevenson - she has a pleasant enough voice but its not authoritative and she tends to sound like a big sister telling you about her favourite films. She isn't helped much by Matthew Sweet's script, which takes a semi-jokey approach, occasionally bordering on the obtuse. Sometimes its amusing, sometimes its just irritating.

This series is also a bit of a spoiler-fest, especially the thrillers episode. The narrator explains the plot of the films in detail, almost always giving away the ending in the process, explaining who gets killed, by whom and why. The irony is that anyone who has seen these films probably won't learn much from the interviewees, while the narrator is happy to spoil them for anyone who hasn't.

Perhaps I shouldn't be too harsh. This show is a fairly harmless time-passer, but its hard to know exactly who its aimed at. I would assume that any viewers devoting more than ten hours to watching this would have a reasonably serious interest in the subject. And with seven feature length episodes and a raft of distinguished interviewees, this could have been an authoritative look at British cinema history, something enlightening for fans and scholars. But the treatment the subject gets here is largely superficial, and its hard not to see this series as something of a missed opportunity.