The Trial of Alex Salmond, review: Kirsty Wark gets personal in this strange documentary

Some documentaries keep the presenter out of the picture. The Trial of Alex Salmond (BBC Two) was not one of them. It featured interviews conducted by Kirsty Wark and interviews with Kirsty Wark, interspersed with footage of Kirsty Wark covering the case. Here was Wark pitching up outside the courthouse, coffee in hand, gossiping with fellow journalists, lamenting her absence from the verdict because the Covid crisis called her back to London.

The verdict in the Salmond case, by the way, was not guilty. He was cleared of all charges of sexually assaulting ten women while Scotland’s First Minister. However, it was pretty clear that the programme-makers hoped he would be found guilty; the first 45 minutes of the hour-long film were devoted to the prosecution case. The testimonies of his accusers were read out by actors. “I know that I was telling the truth,” said one. “I know what happened to me.”

Was this fair, given the acquittals? That is for the BBC’s editorial overseers to determine. What appears beyond debate is that Salmond is deeply unlikeable. It wasn’t mentioned on camera, but his defence counsel was overheard referring to the ex-politician as “an objectionable bully” and “a nasty person to work for”.

Salmond’s supporters say he is the victim of a set-up from within the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon, interviewed on Newsnight (by Wark, of course), dismissed this as “nonsense”. It is a story that will run and run. The sexual assault case was cast as the UK’s first MeToo trial, with wide-reaching implications for the workplace. Salmond’s behaviour, even by his own account, was unacceptable.

In Scotland, the case was headline news. In the rest of the UK, not so much, particularly with an approaching pandemic. But Wark was gripped. “I have never, in all of my years as a journalist, witnessed anything like this,” she gasped, describing it as “one of the most dramatic trials Britain has ever seen”. Wark is a first-class journalist with a cool head, but her investment in this particular story seemed to veer into the personal.