When Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped down as US president in 1969 he was regarded as a calamitous monster by American liberals. His reputation was tarnished by Vietnam; his own party preferred to forget him. So the flattering portrait in the TV movie All the Way (Sky Atlantic) reflects a recent change in attitudes – and Bryan Cranston’s electric performance almost rehabilitates the old fox.
Almost. We get to see Johnson the joker and charmer, though the flattery was as violent as being roughly licked by a Great Dane. But we also see a man whose paranoia extended even to his own family. “You’re against me just like all the rest,” he whimpers to his wife, simply because she demands that he get out of bed.
