This is, he tried to explain to me in a phone interview hours before Prime Minister Theresa May’s calamitous Brexit vote in Parliament on Tuesday (spoiler: she lost), not such a novel thing. “It’s what Shakespeare did, what the poets have always done,” he said. “You put human beings against the backdrop of nation-changing events, and the personal and the political begin to speak to each other, and make sense of each other through the juxtaposition.” Simple. But Shakespeare, not to disparage him, wasn’t dealing with a story involving emerging algorithms, behavioral micro-targeting, and allegations of campaign-finance transgressions that are still being investigated. That Graham has managed to make a functioning drama out of Brexit, let alone such a riveting one, feels a little bit miraculous.

Possibly it’s because he foregrounds a side of the story—and a crucial player—about which remarkably little has been said. Cumberbatch plays Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave (the government-designated official campaign in favor of leaving the EU). A balding, sandy-haired eccentric in a high-visibility cycling vest, Cummings—Brexit argues—is actually a sophisticated architect of chaos, the shadowy Blofeldian author of so much political pain. “In a different branch of history, I was never here,” Cummings tells the camera early in the film. “Some of you voted differently and this never happened.” But since it did, he’s here to explain. “Everyone knows who won, but not everyone knows how.”

The story that comes next follows Graham’s pattern for making political dramas sing: With Cummings as a fascinating and oddly beguiling central character, he delves into the historical texture of the Brexit referendum, structuring events around a compelling dramatic narrative. The story is set within a tight timeline: the 10 months leading up to the 2016 referendum, bookended by flash-forwards to 2020, when Cummings is being quizzed for a public inquiry. Initially, at least, Vote Leave is seen as a renegade force, facing off against the full might of David Cameron’s Conservative government, which endorsed the campaign to remain. Cummings’s counterpart on the other side is Craig Oliver (Black Mirror’s Rory Kinnear), a political strategist and former journalist who’s as well connected as Cummings is disliked (Oliver describes Cummings in the film as “basically mental” and “an egotist with a wrecking ball”).

Cummings is cast in the underdog role, giving Brexit the space to chart his unlikely but inevitable triumph. Rarely, though, are viewers expected to be on his side. Graham stays defiantly nonpartisan throughout, even if he heightens the three most bombastic media presences of the pro-Brexit debate—the politicians Nigel Farage (Paul Ryan) and Boris Johnson (Richard Goulding), and the businessman and political donor Arron Banks (Lee Boardman)—into caricatures, a Greek chorus of squirm-inducing comic relief. Rather than presenting a polemic or an argument, Graham said he wanted instead to consider a significant moment in British history while allowing his audience to “invest in and empathize and understand the motivations of the key players,” which he sees as vital, even more so if you happen to stringently disagree with their politics.