After viewing Premier: The Unscripted Kathleen Wynne three times, two questions continue to nag.

Why was winning Sudbury back from the New Democrats, who "stole" it in June 2014 after 18 years of Liberal rule, so damned important to the majority government of Premier Kathleen Wynne?

Two, was it worth it?

The 40-minute documentary that aired Saturday on CTV’s W5 didn’t aim to address those questions, nor did it. But at least it was shown publicly after original director Roxana Spicer quit over journalistic concerns.

National media have written about the "rare" behind-the-scenes with Ontario’s first female premier, who happens to be lesbian. But if anyone believes this documentary was unscripted, at least at Wynne’s end, I’ve got some nice swamp land in Minnow Lake I’d love to sell you.

The documentary makes Wynne look weak, conniving, motherly, cowardly, grandmotherly, ineffective and, at times, as if she doesn’t take politics seriously, despite best efforts to show her human side.

The documentary opens with Wynne laughing as an episode of the Lucille Ball Show plays on a TV in her kitchen. It’s the one where Lucy and Ethel are working on a chocolate assembly line. When they can’t keep up taking the candies off a conveyor belt, they begin stuffing them into their mouths.

We’re fighting a losing battle, one of the women says. Wynne confides to a film crew the episode "speaks" to her on the issue of feeling overwhelmed. "Oh my God, what’s coming down the path?" she says. It’s hard to say if it’s deliberately or inadvertently ironic.

The Sudbury byelection scandal wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye when documentary makers set out to shadow Wynne before she presented her April 2015 budget.

Unfortunately for Wynne, her agenda was co-opted when former Sudbury Liberal candidate Andrew Olivier went public in December 2014 about behind-the-scenes machinations. Now that was drama.

Olivier, who lost by fewer than 1,000 votes to NDP’s Joe Cimino in June, intended to seek the nomination in the byelection after Cimino shockingly quit.

That plan was scrapped when Wynne, deputy chief of staff Pat Sorbara and Sudbury Liberal supporter Gerry Lougheed Jr. told Olivier they had someone else in mind. The next day, we learned Sudbury NDP MP Glenn Thibeault was defecting and being appointed the Liberal candidate, bypassing the nomination process.

There are a couple of unflattering views of Thibeault in the documentary, one in which he’s eating a cookie while talking with someone in a Liberal war room.

Wynne repeatedly tells journalists Olivier wasn’t offered anything to go away quietly and let her appoint Thibeault. She and Sorbara were trying to keep him "involved" in the political process. Lougheed’s name is never mentioned in the documentary although after it aired, W5 host Lloyd Robertson updated the story with news about the two criminal charges Lougheed is facing.

In one scene, Wynne arrives for a meeting with a top aide, telling him she had just had a long discussion with her mother about Sudbury. Her mother was worried about how it was affecting her daughter. "She just sees the news, right?" says Wynne. She explained to her mother she was trying to keep "the guy" involved. In 40 minutes, Wynne never mentions Olivier by name. The documentary includes footage of Olivier’s bombshell news conference in December.

Wynne later questions aides about whether she should call federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau by his first name or Mr. Trudeau when she meets with him. "There have been lots of complications around the byelection," she tells Trudeau. Trudeau suggests it’s why they do what they do; it makes the job interesting.

One scene is almost comical. Wynne and aides run up a set of stairs at Thibeault’s victory party at the Holiday Inn, trying to escape a Toronto reporter pressing her about revelations that day about an OPP investigation into whether improper offers were made to Olivier.

Wynne later says that while she likes reporters, and even wanted to be one at one time, they are not a politician’s friend.

The nervousness on Wynne’s face as byelection results come in Feb. 5 causes you to wonder again: "Why was this riding so important to a Liberal majority government?"

"Oh my God, that’s fantastic, fantastic, fantastic," Wynne cries when Thibeault pulls ahead of New Democrat Suzanne Shawbonquit, who had been leading, by 1,200 votes.

Feb. 17, when the legislature resumed and Wynne all but took Thibeault by the hand to lead him into the Legislature, Wynne again is hounded by media about the pesky Sudbury scandal.

"I was working to keep this young man involved in the party," she says of Olivier, again not naming him. "And that’s part of the responsibility of the leader of a party."

Perhaps she forgot about her visit before the June 2014 general election when she stood proudly with Olivier, one of only two candidates who sought the Liberal nomination because long-time Grit MPP Rick Bartolucci was retiring.

When reporters continue to press her about having Sorbara step down, Wynne tells aides there are certain journalists whose organizations are "out to get me … they can’t stand what I stand for and they are just going to look for any way to make me look bad."

One could say, after watching this documentary, that Wynne and the Liberals did a pretty good job of that themselves.

carol.mulligan@sunmedia.ca