The symbolic dramatic legacy of the 1980s is Lee Hall's Billy Elliot, by far the snappiest commentary on the divided decade and the tension it exposed between communitarianism and meritocracy.

The play's striking miners of the Durham coalfields sing "Merry Christmas Maggie" and cheerily anticipate her death as a warming thought; yet Billy himself is precisely one of the "tall poppies" she wanted to flourish. That tension means Lee Hall's bromide remains watchable long after most anti-Thatcher dramas have crumbled into dust.

In Peter Morgan's The Audience, at the Gielgud Theatre until June 15, Maggie is played by Haydn Gwynne as imperious, which she was, and venally corruptible, which she wasn't. David Hare, the dominant force of British political drama, still seems to be blaming the small-state Thatcher legacy even in works which attack New Labour. I haven't seen a Mrs T on stage who was more than the agglomeration of unnuanced attitudes.

Television drama, by virtue of wider audiences, feels more compelled to reflect the true range of opinion. Andrea Riseborough marked herself out as a coming star as Margaret Hilda Roberts in The Long Walk to Finchley, a play which acknowledged the extraordinary determination of her rise and a kind of proto-feminism, nimbly disguised by her appearance as prim matriarch. As for Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady on screen, it's an adept imitation but a distastefully voyeuristic piece of work about dementia and failing powers.

Michael Sheen nailed Tony Blair's guile and brilliance first in The Deal and later The Queen, yet the reasons why Baroness Thatcher prevailed for three elections and left her mark on the world stage and the country we now inhabit go strangely underexplored by our best dramatic writers. There's a job to finish here.