Dirty Business: powerful docu-drama about the water scandal

“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.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

It’s not surprising that “Dirty Business” has been likened to “Mr Bates”, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times; and it certainly packs a punch about corporate obfuscation and failures of regulation. But it’s “less tethered to convention” than “Mr Bates”: the drama is spliced, for instance, with “real-life footage of sewage spills”, as well as with scenes in which actors deliver versions of actual statements from the Environment Agency.

There is quite a lot to take in, said Ben Dowell in The Times. But ultimately, it’s a relatable human drama, with poignancy as well as bite. “And gallons and gallons of dirt.”