Postcards from the 48%

When the UK electorate voted on 23 June 2016 in a referendum to decide whether to leave or remain in the European Union, there was shock on both sides when 52% voted to leave, or Brexit. Director David Nicholas Wilkinson's thoughtful, lucid documentary unashamedly gives voice to the "losers" in a poll that leaves the country facing its greatest challenge since the Second World War. Doubling as presenter/narrator, Wilkinson spent 18 months travelling the length and breadth of this seemingly disunited kingdom, canvassing their views and arguably producing as much factual information and practical detail as the whole of the original referendum campaign - the effect of Brexit on the Irish border and the Good Friday Agreement, for example. Renowned Remain cheerleaders like Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Alastair Campbell and AC Grayling ("a constitutional outrage") rub shoulders with less familiar talking heads like novelist Ian McEwan - wryly describing Remainers as "hobbled by a fatal attraction to rational argument" - and actress Miriam Margolyes, whose clifftop house is so near to France, it can access a French mobile service. Ardent Leavers will have no truck with an admittedly one-sided film but with politicians in 2018 still squabbling over the outcome, maybe a diligent documentary encouraging a pause for (second) thought is still worthwhile considering what's at stake.