Dust

A retired, elderly Arthur Scargill is pottering around his flat. He sits down at his computer, clicks onto the BBC News website, turns to his publisher and asks: "Have you seen the news? Thatcher's dead!"

Set in the not too distant future, Dust is an insight into the lives of some of the key protagonists (or, indeed, antagonists) of the great miners strike of the 1980s. It's a story of the defeated remnants of the old trade-union movement and their struggles not only for relevancy but for a mere place in the world.

Although Dust focuses on the lives of the ex-miners and paints Scargill in a much more positive and sympathetic light than is perhaps fashionable these days, it's not a commentary on the events of the 1980s. It doesn't set out to depict the battle between the miners and Thatcher, nor does it try to decide who was right. Instead it examines the social consequences of the mass unemployment that faced the miners in the aftermath of the strikes. Moreover, Dust doesn't care to paint the miners as glorious, noble, hardworking men: they are flawed, stubborn, vulnerable and proud. In many ways, they are quite unsympathetic and captured perfectly by a first-rate experienced cast. Dust is not a leftist propaganda piece, and is all the more compelling as a result.

Ultimately, in spite of the fact that it is steeped in politics and history, Dust is a story about domestic and family tragedy set against a backdrop of contemporary social upheaval. It is balanced, nuanced, passionate, understanding, humane - and really quite brilliant.