BBC2

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A demented gorilla, pizza and David Cameron being told repeatedly he was making the biggest mistake of his career.

If anyone was in need of a refresher as to how the UK landed in the Brexit state it is in, Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil  provided a grisly guide. 

Beginning with the 2010 election, this was strictly speaking nine years of turmoil, but that does not sound as dramatic, and any documentary on Brexit needs all the va-va-voom it can get. 

The story hardly wants for tension but the makers, Brook Lapping, have made a name for themselves with political documentaries that deal in insider accounts.

This is history as related by people who were “in the room” when key moments happened.

In this case, that meant one white, middle-aged, male talking head after another, even if some of them tried to sex things up by going tieless.

Series producer Norma Percy managed to bag some big beasts, including Donald Tusk, European Council President, William Hague, Cameron’s foreign secretary, and a couple of French presidents.

There was plenty of faces from lower down the food chain, from former deputy PM Nick Clegg to various aides.

No David Cameron, however: his chance to settle scores comes in September when his book is out. 

Clegg revealed that Europe had scarcely featured in the coalition talks he held with Cameron. Both agreed they did not want it to hijack their agenda.

That worked out, then. Eventually, Clegg’s patience snapped and he told Cameron and George Osborne that governing with them “felt like being in a cage with a demented gorilla, constantly thrashing around trying to find ever more Eurosceptic and anti-European things to feed to the tabloids, their backbenchers”. 

Tusk related a chat with the British PM after Cameron won the 2015 election with a promise to hold an in/out referendum. 

“I asked him why did you decide on this referendum? It’s so dangerous, so stupid even. He told me, and I was really amazed, even shocked, that the only reason was his own party.”

He thought he was safe because the LibDems would block a referendum. Then he won a majority. Cameron, said Tusk with a rueful smile, had become the victim of his own victory. Tusk was among the better value interviewees.

Tim Shipman’s books, All Out War and Fall Out, have the best Brexit colour, and it is doubtful on the evidence of this, the first of three programmes, that Percy has anything to surpass him. 

Ultimately, this was television for political anoraks. There were moments of levity, though, as when Cameron told Angela Merkel he was facing a barrage of criticism at home.

“What is a ‘barrage’?” asked the German Chancellor. “Blitzkrieg,” said Cameron. Cue a moment of excruciating, don’t mention the war silence, recalled Craig Oliver, Cameron’s PR chief, before the Germans burst into laughter and Merkel gave Cameron a “naughty boy” look. 

An aide to the Czech premier recalled his boss congratulating Cameron on his General Election and Scottish independence referendum wins, but it was clear to them he had no game plan for successfully renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU, the only thing standing between him and a referendum. 

It was time for Tusk to play truth-teller again. “No-one has an appetite for revolution in Europe because of your stupid referendum,” he told Cameron.

“If you try to force us you will lose everything. For the first time I saw something close to fear in his eyes.” 

That kind of up close and personal history made it worth staying the hour. Next week: Greece.