A Fair Shot

Millionaire business-woman Maria Wild (Barbara Flynn) launches a new brand of centrist politics promising a fairer shot for voters and minority parties and is met with a curiously mixed response.

Maria is a celebrity entrepreneur, television personality and UN Goodwill Ambassador. For most of her life she has been the force behind a successful beauty brand that combines social enterprise and impressive profits. In recent years she has become a popular figure on television, heading up the judging panel on a hit TV show about entrepreneurship. She's the sort of person people want to see in politics - but who never survives for long. Recently appointed as leader of a fledgling centrist party in the UK, she has the perfect opportunity to set out her stall with a game-changing speech at the United Nations. But is she the real deal? Or a false dawn?

Tamara Travis (Viv Groskop) is Maria's new speechwriter. A former lobby journalist and Parliamentary adviser, she's a rising star in the world of political speech writing. Tamara believes it's her life's work to make Maria Wild into a figure who can galvanise the political system and re-invigorate the centre. The only difficulty is that Maria is - in Tamara's eyes - more right-wing and old-fashioned than she seems.

This is an intense, entertaining and ambitious two-hander about a woman who might have been coming to the end of her career but recognises that she has a potential extraordinary second act in her grasp. The trouble is, she is horrified by some of the compromises she is being asked to make. The tensions between the two reach breaking point as they struggle to find a common language they can agree on for this speech - and events from the outside world keep encroaching on their agenda.

As the day of the speech approaches, they attempt to outwit each other and second-guess the demands of the moment. And then we hear the speech itself. Which changes everything.