Dirty Business, Channel 4, Monday-Wednesday, four stars
Ever since a certain Mr Bates took on the Post Office, the search has been on for the next fact-based television drama that would rouse the Great British public from its slumber. Dirty Business may be it.
Written and directed by Joseph Bullman, this three-parter roundly condemns what has happened to our water over the last half-century. And I do mean “our” water. Scotland dodged a bullet by keeping water in public hands, but anyone who thinks all’s well here should visit the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland website. Citing Scottish Water data, the campaign group notes that more than 30 billion litres of raw sewage were discharged from sewer overflows into Scotland’s waterways in 2024.
Dirty Business goes one better than Mr Bates in having two heroes at the helm. Jason Watkins and David Thewlis play Cotswold neighbours Peter Hammond and Ashley Smith. Having noticed the state of their local river, the retired copper and the mathematician delve further. So begins a descent into the Wild West world of water companies, a land where profits rule and where you can dump crap into rivers and onto beaches and keep it a secret.
It is no longer a secret when your child ends up covered in it, as happened to Mark and Julie Preen while on holiday in Devon with their two daughters. The youngest, Heather, fell ill with E. coli 0157 and died. She was eight years old.
What happened to the Preens is one of several strands that come together to make a shocking whole. I defy anyone to watch the scenes of Heather in her parents’ arms and not become enraged.
This is a tale of corporate greed and buck-passing, with the “little people” left to pay the price.
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Bullman made the drama Partygate, which skewered the Johnson administration for what went on in Downing Street during lockdown. He comes out swinging with footage of Margaret Thatcher predicting privatisation will go “very successfully indeed”, and barely pauses for breath thereafter. David Cameron is shown boasting about deregulation, Liz Truss too. There’s a shot of the Grenfell Tower ablaze in case the message is not quite clear.
As for the “bad guys” - and quite a few women - who populate the ranks of water company executives and the supposedly watchful regulator, no quarter is given. Their attempts to defend the indefensible often resemble some warped version of the BBC sitcom W1A, except this is no laughing matter. Several familiar faces from satirical drama turn up among the cast. At one point, Jon Culshaw, of Dead Ringers fame, appears as an MP.
Though some might accuse the filmmakers of bias, Dirty Business makes no pretence of neutrality. Given what is uncovered, it is hard not to agree wholeheartedly with the case for the prosecution. Speaking of which, it turns out that England’s Environment Agency has prosecutorial powers - just like the Post Office - but no water company executive has gone to jail for breaking the law. Funny that.
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