Miriam Margolyes

Gaining access to the court of Donald Trump nearly cost filmmaker his life

It is rare to see a documentary presenting its subject as a stone cold liar in the first scene. There will usually be some initial tip-toeing around the topic, making a case for and against, before reaching a conclusion. No such niceties were necessary with Roger Stone, the subject of A Storm Foretold (BBC4, Tuesday). As the political fixer lights a comically large cigar (paging Dr Freud), the Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen asks when Stone had his first smoke. Seven years old, he replies. “I was running a Republican state convention and somebody handed me one.”