The day hell came to Sri Lanka — all chillingly caught on camara

Ubiquitous CCtV cameras are creating endless footage. Future historians will be able to view billions of hours of people getting on buses or buying Cokes in corner shops.

but because everything is filmed, reporter Jane Corbin was able to draw on extraordinary images of both murderers and victims in the seconds before death — images that until now we could only see recreated by actors in movies.

Her account of the church and hotel bombings in sri Lanka last year on Easter sunday, Terror In Paradise (bbC2), culminated with a message recorded by two brothers and the father of a suicide bomber.

they, too, had high explosives in plastic pouches strapped across their stomachs, and one man was clutching his small son, who was weeping with terror.

All around the room were their wives and other children.

the maniac with the smartphone camera was yammering about how they would all be united in Heaven, and how he couldn’t wait for the police to arrive so that he could achieve everlasting bliss by slaughtering his family.

When the dust settled after the blast, all that was left of them were two craters in the concrete floor of their house.

this man was brainwashed and demented, but at least he realised he was taping his last moments. the guests we saw at three luxury seafront hotels in sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, had no idea as they sauntered around the breakfast buffets that they were in deadly danger.

if the ramshackle sri Lankan government had listened to the repeated warnings of its security services, perhaps hotel staff would have been on the alert for suspicious bags. instead, we watched them help the terrorists by carrying their rucksack bombs for them.

Even after the first bombs went off at a church and a hotel on April 21, it was plain from the CCtV that people in other parts of the city were oblivious — until the picture dissolved in a flash of white and a soundless explosion.

some survivors were able to give vivid descriptions of the carnage. others were too racked with grief: one mother who lost her husband and children said the terrorists had made a cemetery of her home. ‘i die every second,’ she wept.

Corbin coaxed superb interviews from the witnesses, though her voiceover was not always as insightful. ‘Easter sunday is a special day for the Christians,’ she informed us.

in all, 259 innocent people were killed in the atrocities. the bombers included the wealthy playboy sons of a local businessman. the cameras watched one of them trying to detonate his device and failing: he jabbed at it like a man who couldn’t persuade a tV remote handset to work.

in the end, he gave up and wandered off. No actor could have conveyed how clueless he looked, or how unbothered. Later, he did manage to get the bomb working . . . and blew himself up in his motel room.

there’s just space to highlight a gentler show, the return of James Martin’s Islands To Highlands (itV) — a coastal tour of britain, with plenty of clifftop barbeques and dockside feasts rustled up on a Primus stove.

this time he was in the isles of scilly. the sunny afternoon spent snorkelling with grey seals looked truly blissful.

i notice James rarely even tastes the meals he cooks. Perhaps he is on a diet.

He’s clearly conscious of his well-covered tum. Pulling on his extra- extra-large wetsuit, he complained: ‘i feel like i’ve been vacuum-packed.’