“Mr Bates vs the Post Office” showed that TV dramas have the power to “intensify public disgust at a scandal, forcing official attitudes to change”, said Jack Seale in The Guardian. If Channel 4’s drama-documentary “Dirty Business” fails to move the needle about water pollution, “perhaps nothing will”.
Set partially in 2016, it follows neighbours Ashley Smith (David Thewlis) and Peter Hammond (Jason Watkins), who turned detective after noticing that their local river, the Windrush, had filled with “brown murk”. A parallel storyline focuses on the death, in 1999, of eight-year-old Heather Preen, who’d developed E. coli soon after swimming off a beach in Devon.
In less skilled hands, there would have been a “tonal clash” between the two strands – the 2016 story is filled with “lovely faux-mocking banter” between Ash and Peter, while the earlier events “are pure horror”. But it works, thanks in no small part to the series’ intelligent use of comedy.
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