Julien Temple knows his way around a rockumentary, viz The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, UK Subs: Punk Can Take It (both 1979), Rolling Stones Live at the Max (1991), The Filth and the Fury (2000), Glastonbury (2006), Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (2007), The Sex Pistols: There'll Always Be An England (2008), Oil City Confidential (2009), The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson (2015) and Keith Richards: The Origin of the Species (2016). Having made Ray Davies: Imaginary Man for television in 2010, he is clearly the perfect choice to profile The Kinks in the forthcoming You Really Got Me. But Temple takes a detour from Haringey to Camden Town in order to chart the career of Madness and their iconic frontman, Suggs, in My Life Story.

Essentially, this is the screen version of the one-man show that Suggs (real name Graham McPherson) started touring in 2012. Having spray-painted the title (complete with an ellipsis and a question mark) on an alleyway wall, Suggs emerges on to the stage of a bijou theatre with pianist Deano Mumford. He sits on a chair and recalls the 50th birthday bash his wife Anne had organised for him at Wilton's Music Hall. The following morning, while sitting in the bath, he had witnessed the strange death of his beloved cat, Mamba, and following an emotional exchange with a cat-loving cabby, Suggs had decided to ask his mother about the father who had supposedly walked out on them when he was three.

A cutaway takes us to a jazz club in Manchester, where the 18 year-old Edith Gower is performing with the house band. Warming to her theme, Edith reveals that she had spent time singing in The Blue Angel in Liverpool, which was the preferred watering hole of The Beatles after they had been playing at The Cavern. Here, she had met a man who got her a job in the Colony Club in London. Suggs recalls the seedy clientele that used to frequent Soho's private members clubs and bursts into an abbreviated version of the classic Kinks song about a transvestite, `Lola'. This sparks a memory about spending afternoons in the cartoon cinema on Piccadilly Circus and his surprise at seeing junkies shooting up. However, he was unprepared for Edith to disclose that his father was a heroin addict who ended up in the asylum at Tooting for trying to inject himself with paraffin.

Struggling to come to terms with the fact that his father had been a decent man before he succumbed, Suggs flashes forward a decade to his first job, as a butcher's apprentice in Chapel Street Market, and the aquamarine suit that cost £8 in 1977 and yet made him feel like a million dollars. This purchase is amusingly presented as a pastiche of the children's television series, Mr Benn, while a later segment on baggy trousered school days resembles the opening credits of Grange Hill. But, such is the stream of consciousness nature of the show that Suggs ties in the suit with teenage punch-ups between rival gangs of punks, skins and rockers and an encounter with a group of heavy metal fans in the pub to which he had repaired following Ethel's recollections.

During the course of his peripatetic childhood, Suggs spent time with an aunt and uncle near Haverfordwest and found himself enjoying the countryside and improving at school. Things changed when he returned to the capital and enrolled at the Quintin Kynaston comprehensive in Swiss Cottage, where he was teased for his faint Welsh accent and rapidly became demotivated. Taking a nickname from a dictionary of jazz musicians, Suggs became a prolific graffiti tagger. This led to a showdown with a glam rock gang, the discovery of girls in the Duke of Hamilton pub in Hampstead and party invitations to posh houses full of stealable records. 

Drolly comparing nicking an armful of LPs to illegal downloads, Suggs delivers a crisp rendition of `Shut Up', which is intercut with snippets from the original Madness video. He insists that he only discovered he could sing while leaving a screening of George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973) and being invited to join the North London Invaders by three of his glam tagging nemeses, Mike Barson, Chris Foreman and Lee Thompson. However, as he was a dedicated follower of Chelsea and had a fortnightly appointment to defend the honour of The Shed, Suggs found himself being demoted from singer to drummer and then sacked altogether.

Back on his 50th birthday, he has wandered out of the rocker pub and been chased into Reckless Records by an army of insolent urchins who have no idea who he is. But, then, he realises, neither does he. His Wikipedia page knows more about his antecedents than he does. So, he took a train to Birmingham to find out what William McPherson had done with himself between conceiving a son and dying in 1975.

It strikes him that his father passed on just as Suggs kicked off and he remembers being drafted back into the band as singer just before the name was changed to Morris and the Minors. Now playing some of their own songs, as well as cover versions, they hit upon a ska vibe combined with an Ian Dury style of lyric delivery that went down well with the punters of The Dublin Castle in Camden Town and The Hope and Anchor in Islington. It also struck a chord with Jerry Dammers of The Specials, who convinced Madness to sign to his 2 Tone label.

The Specials hailed from Coventry and Suggs himself arrives in the Midlands after his relaxing train journey north. In the registry of births, marriages and deaths, he discovers that William had remarried and made a career as a photographer. He is touched that he managed to turn his life around and only wishes that they could have shared his success, as Madness released their first singles, played Top of the Pops and embarked upon the chaotic 2 Tone Tour that confirmed the popularity of the ska craze. However, they soon moved to Stiff Records, where `One Step Beyond' gave the band a cult cachet that was reinforced by the wacky videos that became their calling card.

Around the time Madness freaked out The Clash by interrupting a rehearsal dressed as coppers, Suggs married Anne (aka Deaf School vocalist Bette Bright). All his family attended, with the exception of his father and this segues into a visit to the Birmingham house where he had spent his final years. The old lady who opened the door had never heard of the McPhersons and Suggs couldn't work out if he felt disappointment or relief.

Meanwhile, Madness had started to burn out and they agreed to call it a day. Seeking gainful employment, Suggs briefly hosted a karaoke show on Channel 5 before hosting a programme on Virgin Radio. He also got to play crooner Al Bowly alongside Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller in John Maybury's The Edge of Love (2008). However, his role proved small and he experienced a further disappointment when he found that William's widow had succumbed to an overdose the year after he had died without a job. Rather than turning his life around, therefore, he had remained a junkie with no hopes and even fewer options.

Following a reunion-cum-farewell gig, Madness began playing regularly and Suggs tells a poignant story (complete with a Tommy Cooper impression) about replacing Oasis on the night that Liam and Noel had their final spat in Paris. Things may not always have run smoothly, but he realised that his Madness bandmates had been a better surrogate siblings than the Gallaghers appeared to be. Thus, even though he had failed to find out about his father, he had learned that he was a nice enough man and that his own best course of action was to keep heading forwards, with just the occasional look back.  

Closing with a slightly self-conscious run through of `It Must Be Love', this compellingly genial trip down one Nutty Boy's memory lane seems to end far too quickly and many watching the final credit crawl in a cinema will envy those lucky souls in the audience at Hoxton Hall and the Shepherd's Bush Empire, who had the pleasure of seeing the show live. They would, however, have missed the nifty footnotes compiled by Julien Temple, which not only take the monologue out of the auditorium, but also complement it by juxtaposing archive clips with location shots that make the recollections more vivid.

Ably abetted by Mumford at the upright piano, Suggs very much remains centre stage, however. Indeed, his relaxed delivery recalls that of Dawn French in her own one-woman show, 30 Million Minutes, which was recently shown on the BBC. But, as the old videos demonstrate, Suggs has always had presence and his radio days have clearly honed his gift of the self-deprecating gab. A couple of gags come close to falling flat, but the audience is so clearly on his side that they receive enough good-natured groans to push them over the line. For the rest, this is slick and knowing without being fussy and smug and anyone around in Madness's heyday will relish every second. 

Petrolheads have been royally served by the documentary fraternity in recent times. Mark Craig got the ball rolling with a trio of BBC film: Jackie Stewart: The Flying Scot (2001), Graham Hill: Driven (2008) and Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion (2009). But it was Asif Kapadia's Senna (2010) that changed the rules of the motor sport actuality and inspired the likes of Richard Heap's Grand Prix: The Killer Years (2010), Paul Crowder's 1: Life on the Limit (2013), Hannes M. Schalle's Lauda: The Untold Story, Diarmuid Lavery and Michael Hewitt's Road, Charlotte Fantell's Journey to Le Mans (all 2014), Seán Ó Cualáin's Crash and Burn (2016), Roger Donaldson's McLaren and Morgan Matthews's Williams (both 2017).

The next to line up on the starting grid follows the same basic format. But Daryl Goodrich's Ferrari: Race to Immortality is by far the saddest dissertation on the world of Formula 1 and the men who risk their lives to secure its fleeting glory. Adapted from Chris Nixon's book Mon Ami Mate, this marks something of a departure for Goodrich after We Are the People We've Been Waiting For (2009), which featured Tony Blair, Richard Branson, Germaine Greer and Bill Clinton in an analysis of the British education system. But, while it adheres to the trusted archive and anecdote approach, this offers intriguing insights into the contrasting mindsets of team owner Enzo Ferrari and the five drivers entrusted to win him the world championship in the mid-1950s.

The picture opens with a chorus of unidentified voices stating the importance of Ferrari for Formula One and recalling the dangers of motor racing in the 1950s. In particular, they dwell on how drivers like Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins took extraordinary risks in their stride in order to bounce back from accidents and even the deaths of friends to race again the following Sunday. They were daredevils, but never considered themselves to be superhuman. They were simply prepared to lean out of the window to see how far they could reach before they fell.

The founder of the team, Enzo Ferrari, always told his drivers that they would become immortal whether they lived or died and his spirit of romance remains a key element in the enduring appeal of the red car. As biographer Richard Williams recalls, Ferrari had a tough early life, but he threw himself into motor sport with a passion. He soon proved to be a decent talent scout and F1 historian Doug Nye recalls that he was particularly impressed with Hawthorn and Collins, who had been tearing up the circuit in the UK. Fellow driver Innes Ireland suggests they were akin to naughty schoolboys, as they were always looking to have fun.

Stirling Moss considered Hawthorn a flashy character, who saw racing as fun rather than the be all and end all. But he concedes that he was one of the boys, while fellow driver Tony Brooks declares Collins to be someone who lapped it all up, especially the attention of the girls. Driver Lance Macklin's ex-wife, Shelagh Montague-Brown, remembers Collins as being someone who enhanced life and admits to having had a crush on Hawthorn. But he dated Sally Young, who enthuses about the family sense that existed among the drivers and we see lots of clips of them larking around, as well as striding around the pit lanes and being feted by adoring fans. However, the shadow of danger was forever hovering over them.

In 1955, Hawthorn and Juan Manuel Fangio had decided to liven up the Le Mans 24-Hour Race by putting on a driving exhibition during their first two-hour stint. However, as Hawthorn came towards the pits, he tried to overtake Macklin and caused him to swerve so that Pierre Levegh shot up and over his car and landed square on the safety barrier causing the chassis to shatter and send debris along the front row of the crowd like a torpedo. Eighty-three spectators were killed and almost 100 more were injured, with numerous children among the casualties.

Macklin remembers Hawthorn being shattered by the carnage he had helped cause and claimed he had vowed never to race again. But, as the organisers kept the race going to enable the emergence vehicles to get away without having to negotiate the crowds, Hawthorn was back behind the wheel for his next stint. Nye commends him on a brilliant drive and regrets the fact that the press seized upon a still from some newsreel footage showing a grim-faced Hawthorn breaking momentarily into a smile, as he waved to the stands after his victory. Fiancée Jean Ireland shares Nye's distaste for the fact Hawthorn was vilified for seeming to celebrate in the wake of a tragedy and she says the whole incident hurt him deeply.

Among the drivers within Scuderia Ferrai in 1956 were Italians Eugenio Castellotti and Luigi Musso, as well as Fangio, Collins and the Spanish marquis, Alfonso de Portago. The latter's versatility impressed Ferrari, as did the fact that he befriended his terminally ill son, Dino. As Collins's wife Louise King reflects, this possibly explains why he showed him greater affection than he did his other drivers, as Ferrari had a reputation of being a manipulative individual who was happiest setting people off against each other. However, it also helped that he was in with a chance of winning the 1956 world title.

Journalist Nigel Roebuck remembers Collins going into the Italian Grand Prix as the favourite. But Castellotti and Musso were keen to catch the eye of the home crowd. So, when Fangio's car broke down, they refused to let him take their vehicles to finish the race. Yet, Collins had no such qualms and considered it an honour to help a legend of the sport reinforce his reputation. Ferrari was deeply touched by this gesture and agreed that Collins would have plenty of opportunities to take the laurel wreath for himself.

As 1957, Collins married actress Louise King after a whirlwind romance in Miami. But, Williams avers, Ferrari disliked his drivers having personal attachments because it gave them something else to live for other than his team. He was also shocked when Fangio left for Maserati. But he welcomed Hawthorn back to the fold in order to ensure there was fierce competition for the four cars and he always kept his drivers aware that their place depended solely upon their results. 

Tony Brooks's wife Pina recalls how everyone in Italy at this time was mad about motor racing and F1 journalist Peter Windsor describes the elegance that Castellotti brought to the Scuderia. But rival driver Phil Hill dismisses him as a mediocre amateur, who had been born with a silver spoon and had started racing with a Ferrari sports car that had been purchased by his mother. However, he did what he was told when Ferrari ordered him to break the track record at Modena after it had been claimed by Maserati. Reluctantly, Castellotti took out a vehicle still in development and was thrown clear when it failed and catapulted into the top row of an empty grandstand. But he died from his injuries and Ferrari barely acknowledged the loss before asking if the car had survived in one piece.

Moss  clearly found Ferrari a difficult man to like, but he respected his commitment to his cars and suggests that his legacy is that fans today still worship the red car rather than the man behind the wheel. Portago also recognised that Ferrari could be a dictator, but he loved racing for him and adored his car. Indeed, he had such faith in it that he told one interviewer that he knew it would never kill him. But, in 1957, during the Mille Miglia touring race, the car let him down. During a pit stop, a mechanic had noticed that the metalwork had been dented and had been pushed close to the rear tyre. But Portago only had time to kiss movie star girlfriend Linda Christian before setting off again and, in sight of the finish, the tyre blew and Portago and navigator Edward Nelson perished along with nine spectators when the car careered into the crowd.

With the Vatican leading a chorus of disapproval, the race was removed from the calendar, while Ferrari fought a manslaughter case after five children lost their lives. Meanwhile, Hawthorn was facing his own trials, as questions were being asked in the House of Commons why he had not performed his National Service. In fact, he had a congenital kidney problem that he insisted was kept quiet, as it might prevent him from getting a racing licence. He could also be tetchy and a bit arrogant. But he and Collins became firm friends and called each other `mon ami mate' after they had heard the phrase in a cartoon about a Martian. But, as Windsor and Roebuck speculate, their closeness blunted their competitive edge and this impacted upon the overall performance of the Scuderia.

Ferrari preferred his drivers to spur each other on and, as the 1958 season began, he felt Hawthorn and Collins were ganging up on Musso. Girlfriend Fiamma Breschi remembers getting letters in which he complained about them sidelining him. But Brooks remembers he had problems outside the pits, as he had got into financial difficulty while importing American cars and had also run up some gambling debts. So, he saw the French Grand Prix as a chance to make a splash and he had recklessly tried to overtake Hawthorn and had spun off the track. He died of his head injuries and Breschi was distraught. But Ferrari took a shine to her and set her up in a flower shop and they enjoyed a lengthy relationship.

The nation mourned, as Musso's death left Italy without a leading driver. But, as Pina Brooks and Louise King assert, his teammates had no option but to carry on and accept that these things happen and that they won't happen to them because they will be sufficiently in control not to make mistakes. Ferrari himself went on record as saying that fatalities occur because of a confluence of factors rather than a single piece of misfortune. But Montague-Brown states that everyone knew the dangers and Nye and Brooks confirm that nobody raced under duress, as they were there because they wanted to be.

Collins and King had just put a deposit down on a house and everything looked rosy after he beat Hawthorn into second place at Silverstone. Indeed, he had decided to retire at the end of the season and Ferrari was concerned that his heart was no longer in his duty. No one suspected what would happen at the Nürburgring, however, even though this winding, undulating mountain circuit had a reputation for unpredictability. Brooks had been leading the race, but the Ferraris had been struggling to maintain pace and they had dropped off the pace when Hawthorn saw Collins misjudge a turn and flip his car on a bank. He had been flown to a hospital in Bonn, where King learned he had died from her father (who was a bigwig at the UN), who kept tabs on his son-in-law's races.

They had only been together for 18 months, but King would not have changed anything. Hawthorn was bereft and the interview footage of him trying to express his emotions is harrowing. But he insisted on finishing the season as a tribute to his friend and persuaded Ferrari (who had considered quitting the sport altogether) to give him a car. As they went into the last race in Morocco, Moss needed to stay ahead of Hawthorn to become the first British world champion. But, with Phil Hill ceding second place, Hawthorn won by a single point and Ferrari had ended a catastrophic year with the title.

However, when compatriot Stewart Lewis-Evans was rushed from the track after his car caught fire, Hawthorn informed Ferrari that he was retiring and Jean Ireland recalls the team owner being apoplectic at what he felt was treachery in the face of triumph. To Ferrari's mind, one worked in order to avoid having to confront one's mortality and he couldn't understand why Hawthorn would want to bow out. But, when Lewis-Evans died six days after his victory, he knew he had made the right decision.

On 22 January 1959, Hawthorn had a lunch appointment in London and he had agreed to meet King in her hotel afterwards. Ireland recalls him being in pain that morning and he had gone to town with great reluctance. On the road, he had spotted team owner Rob Walker and they began to race. Walker recalls how hairy it quickly became, but felt he couldn't back down. King remembers being informed at her hotel that Hawthorn had died and we see the shock still on her face six decades later, as she had been very fond of him.

Until now, the voiceovers had all been delivered off screen. But, in this final summation, we get to see them all. Nye also looks saddened, as he recalls Walker telling him how he had rushed to the car and seen Hawthorn's eyes glaze before he took his last breath. As we see images of the mangled wreckage, Ireland and Brooks reflect on hearing the news, with the latter admitting that his death was so unnecessary. Ireland suspects he had a blackout and Windsor and Roebuck concur that associates felt he was a sick man and would not have lived past his mid-30s.

But Ferrari had already moved on, as he had little time for those who didn't dedicate themselves to his ambition. He admits in an interview that he lived for his own pleasure and expected those around him to contribute to his success. But he insists he did nothing detrimental to anyone in his circle and Williams and Montague-Brown agree that the five drivers who lost their lives in such a short space of time had been grateful for the opportunities and had died doing what they loved. Nye calls them warriors and a military drumbeat drives the score during a final montage of triumphs and disasters before the picture ends with Ferrari's promise to his drivers: `Win or die, you will be immortal.'

A closing caption reveals that 39 drivers died between 1950-60, yet Ferrari lived to be 90 and his team remains the most successful in the history of the sport. But he doesn't emerge with much credit from this shadow profile, whose sympathies lie squarely with the driving quintet of Musso, Castellotti, Portago, Hawthorn and Collins. It might have been interesting to learn more about the reaction of the Italian public and press to the British pair, especially as they seem to have given Musso such a hard time. But the tone remains resolutely hero-worshipful, as friends, family and fans alike stick to the `good eggs' party line.

There is also unanimity on the devil-may-care attitude to danger, which echoes down from all of the recent documentaries on this most romanticised of sports. Yet, while the carefully chosen quotations from Ferrari suggest a `them and us' disparity between the owners and officials on one side and the drivers on the other, all seem to agree that spectators were entitled to see thrills and spills for their money and no one seems disconfited by the fact that punters were almost disappointed when drivers walked away unscathed from terrifying smash-ups.

On the technical side, Goodrich and editor Paul Trewartha maintain their focus on the vintage visuals by keeping the talking-heads out of sight until the final reel. The archive footage is certainly evocative, especially the glossy colour clips that show off the famous Ferrari red. Moreover, Jerry Lane and Andrew Lancaster's score avoids undue emotional emphasis. But few concessions are made to those coming fresh to this tragic tale and, consequently, this is primarily a treat for F1 aficionados.

Everything you need to know about The Final Year, Greg Barker's documentary account of the foreign policy initiatives pursued by the Obama administration in 2016, can be summed up by the glib use of a soulful cover of Bob Dylan's totemic anthem, “The Times They Are A-Changin'”, over shots of the principal characters boxing up their belongings and leaving the White House to make way for incoming president Donald Trump. Barker's fundamental misunderstanding of the lyrics and his failure to recognise the extent to which history has changed their meaning in the 55 years since they were written typifies this complacent record a seismic year in American politics, which allows itself to be completely broadsided and knocked off course by the events of 8 November.

During a whizz-bang montage chronicling the foreign policy highlights of the first seven years of Barack Obama's presidency, Barker introduces us to his main players: Secretary of State John Kerry; National Security Advisor Susan Rice; US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power; and Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, who is one of Obama's most trusted insiders and is a man with an inordinate amount of confidence in his own ability. Significantly, there are no references to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's contribution to the first four years, while Barker presumes that everyone will already know background details such as Power's Pulitzer Prize win for her 2002 book, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. But Barker uses scenes of Kerry forgetting his phone as he leaves for the office and Power negotiating with her children over their doughnut consumption to create the impression that he has unfettered access to a powerful quartet dedicated to realising Obama's pledge to change the way America conducts its diplomacy.

In fact, he seems to spend a lot of time hovering on the fringes as Obama launches into a round of overseas trips that he hopes will secure a legacy that cannot be dismantled by any incoming Republican opponent. Much mention is made of the imminent election during the opening flurry of clips designed to suggest how hectic life in the West Wing can be. But the focus is firmly on guaranteeing the normalisation of relations with Cuba, the ratification of the Paris Accord on climate change and the Iran nuclear agreement, and the resolution of the conflict in Syria. Nobody pretends that swinging these deals is going to be easy, especially for a lame duck presidency. But, while Kerry warns that the situations in Yemen, Libya and North Korea give reason for concern, there is a self-congratulatory air to the initial remarks, especially from Rhodes.

As a former journalist, Power sets great store  by seeing things for herself and she explains how fieldwork is the cornerstone to her approach to diplomacy. She lauds Rhodes for his commitment and passion, as he discloses his role in speechwriting and the presentation of foreign policy strategies. But Barker never settles on a topic and whisks us off to Vietnam, as Rhodes and Kerry pave the way for a visit by President Obama. An archive clip alludes to Kerry's role in protesting the war in which he had served, but this crucial moment in his political evolution is brushed aside to show Obama charming a young Vietnamese audience during a town hall Q&A session.

Similarly, a passing remark about 9/11 is allowed to stand as the motivating factor for Rhodes's career before he is shown agonising over the wording of the speech that Obama will deliver during his landmark visit to Hiroshima at the end of the week. But, rather than exploring the process of drafting and refining a speech, Barker asks Rhodes about the fallout from a New York Times Magazine profile, in which he accused the White House press corps of knowing nothing. Little attempt is made to put this story into context and Barker fails to follow up when Rhodes responds with a degree of embarrassed difficulty. In the grand scheme, this is a minor incident, but its coverage encapsulates the flaws of a film that consistently wastes its opportunities.

During the trip to Hiroshima, Obama met a survivor of the atomic bombing and suggests that the views of ordinary people should be taken into account when fashioning foreign policy. However, he is far from naive and knows that moral idealism and national security don't always coincide and he drives away from the memorial site with more hope for change than any sense of expectation. Yet, this speech was delivered in May 2016 and one is left wondering what Barker has been doing during the first five months of his assignment, as he has only managed to gather a few sound bites and avoided all in-depth discussion of the problems facing the United States across the globe.

Power comments on her awareness that time is slipping through her fingers and she tells her team that she wants to sign off with some tangible achievements that cannot be reversed by a hostile regime in the Oval Office. Also aware of the clock ticking, Kerry is shown leaving a phone message for his wife as he is whisked off to the airport for another round of shuttle diplomacy. He lands in Vienna to meet with Sergei Lavrov in the hope of making progress on the Syrian situation. But, while Barker coaxes Kerry into spouting a few platitudes about optimism and risk taking and snatches a word with Jon Finer, the Chief of Staff at the State Department, he succeeds only in demonstrating that Kerry has boundless energy for a man in his seventies.

He touches on the relationship between Washington and Moscow and how private co-operation continues in the face of public stand-offs. But, once again a potentially intriguing subject is left dangling and the same is true of Syria. Kerry and Power concede that the crisis is fraught with difficulties. Yet neither is prepared to reveal what they are on camera and this lack of substance set against a welter of buzz-cut shots of them boarding planes, walking along corridors and shaking hands with foreign counterparts does a distinct disservice to their concerted efforts to achieve a breakthrough like the one with Cuba, which is consigned to history with a snippet of humblebragging from Rhodes about his role in reconciling two sworn enemies.

The next chance to offer an insider insight into a laudable achievement occurs during a momentous visit to Laos in July, when Obama sought to build bridges with a nation that had been subjected to secret bombardment by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. But Barker misses a scoop when Rhodes learns during a preparatory trip that Donald Trump has secured the Republican nomination for the presidential race. He mentions that a few diplomats have asked him about the underlying reasons for Trump's popularity, but he blithely dismisses any prospect of the campaign succeeding. Nevertheless, a knowing cut takes us from this bluntly confident prediction to the citizenry ceremony for Power's maid, Maria, which sees the Irish-born ambassador shed a poignant tear at the notion that an immigrant could rise to such high office in her adopted country.

Power's sincerity cannot be questioned, but Rhodes is once again made to look smug, as he sits at the table where Obama has just completed a summit meeting with Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Yet he has a serious point to make, as the marked improvement in relations with China on a range of issues has been marginalised by the media covering the presidential race. His frustration is justified, as he has detected the tone that the campaign will take. But the restless Barker is on the move again, as he follows Power to Nigeria, where she meets the mothers of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram. Once again, Power comes across as eminently empathetic and principled. Yet Barker shows no inclination to explore the situation and the US response to it in anything but superficial terms.

The same fault is repeated, as Barker joins Kerry on a fact-finding trip to Greenland and Rhodes complains that the American media is more obsessed with terrorism than climate change, even though the latter is clearly the more potentially calamitous issue. And Obama's landmark visit to Laos is ticked off with a sound bite of him admitting that the USA had fought a secret war being played over footage of Nixon denying anything was afoot. Similarly, the significance of Power's coup in persuading Cameroon to help combat Boko Haram is reduced to an after-the-event chat in the back of a car with US ambassador Michael Hoka, while her engagement with women at the Minawao Refugee Camp is overshadowed by the death of a small boy who was run over by a car in her convoy.

More damningly, Barker soft soaps when divisions begin to appear between Power and Rhodes over Syria, as he commends her idealism while reminding her that they have to live in the real world, where force often has a greater impact than good intentions. Kerry also admits that he doesn't always see eye to eye with Power and Rice tries to spin this by stating that unilateral agreement would actually limit Obama's options. Ultimately, he decides against military intervention because Afghanistan and Iraq have proved that might isn't always the answer. The hawkish Rhodes bows to the Commander-in-Chief's reluctance to commit US troops to another theatre of war, but Barker gleans nothing about the decision-making process and has to content himself with off-the-cuff quotes about its ramifications.

As unattributed voices express their doubts about Obama's foreign policy record, we roll into September 2016. While writing the president's final address to the UN, Rhodes is still in denial about Trump's prospects of defeating Clinton. He is also preeningly comfortable with the fact that he and Power now have such diverging opinions on what they have achieved since 2013. She reels off the areas where conflict continues to rage, while Rhodes feels Obama has a right to claim that this is the best time to be alive because the threat of superpower confrontation has diminished. However, Obama recognises the plight of the 65,000 refugees in camps around the world and he uses his final General Assembly to try and broker some deals. But events on the ground in derail Kerry's efforts, as 70 Syrian troops are killed in a US airstrike targeted at ISIS. Power and Kerry make accusatory speeches at the UN and Rhodes concedes that the administration failed to recognise that Vladimir Putin's agenda isn't always the same a Russia's. But, once again, a fascinating issue is parked before its implications have been fully assessed.

Instead, Barker joins Power on election night, as she welcomes feminist icons like Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem to a house party to celebrate the still-expected Clinton victory. Yet he generates no sense of occasion, as the assembled realise the tide is turning against them. Rhodes does provide him with a seminal moment, however, as his stuttering stupefaction while trying to fathom his emotions captures the enormity of the shock felt by the Democrats at so disastrously misreading the national mood. Kerry puts on a brave face, as he declares that his duty lies in ensuring a smooth transition, while Rhodes worries that Trump will ignore the advice of career diplomats to put his personal stamp on all aspects of government.

For the outgoing Obama, however, the show has to go on and he lands in Athens for his final official visit and takes great delight in touring the Parthenon before thanking Greece for giving the world the priceless, but unpredictable gift of democracy. In what seems to be a snatched backstage interview, Obama tries to reassure the audience that the trendlines towards peace are too entrenched to bring about an easy change in direction. But Rhodes admits that, while the younger generation shares Obama's vision, reactionary elements have seized the levers of power and they could do untold damage before they are voted out of office. Power has no intention of quitting, as the fight begins now. But, while Obama reminds us all that we are merely links in the long chain of history, he and Rhodes are optimistic that they have planted seeds that will produce fruit in years to come.

As The Brothers & Sisters launch into their gospelly rendition of a classic Dylan protest song, we are left with a shot of a shirt-sleeved Rhodes sidling out of a side door and into history. One suspects that no one was in the mood to allow Barker to eavesdrop on any transition discussions. But, surely, after 90 days and 21 countries, he made an attempt during the long months of post-production to persuade one or more of the protagonists into commenting on Trump's bid to demolish their edifice? By confining himself so rigidly to the final year, however, Barker has merely produced a time capsule that is bereft of perspective rather than a fully contextualised analysis of the last chapter of a story that promised so much.

Editors Joshua Altman and Langdon Page do a decent job of conveying the breakneck pace of life in the diplomatic fast lane. But their flash cut approach prevents Barker from delving into complex issues or getting to know Kerry, Power, Rhodes and the barely seen Rice as people. As a consequence, this chummy piece of reportage falls a fair way behind the standards that Barker set himself in Manhunt: The Inside Story of the Hunt for Bin Laden (2013) and follows Pacho Velez and Simon Pettengill's The Reagan Story (2017) in failing to make the most of a golden opportunity.