Blink and you missed the real story of our soldiers under fire

Let’s start at the very end. As the credits rolled on the Iraq War drama Danny Boy ( BBC2), a caption flashed up. ‘A disciplinary tribunal into Phil shiner’s work revealed evidence of errors and misconduct,’ it read. ‘As a result, he was struck off.’

that masterpiece of understatement amounted to the only real criticism of the former solicitor.

It was tucked away at the end of a 90-minute dramatisation of the war crimes case he waged for six years against British soldiers.

Anyone who blinked and missed those two muted sentences will have no idea what a vile, deceitful weasel shiner is. On the contrary, if you knew nothing about the story before watching this drama, toby Jones’s portrayal must leave a very different impression.

Jones played him as an impassioned workaholic, a lone warrior for human rights who sacrificed his health in pursuit of the truth. He was an anti-authority crusader, speaking truth to power.

the BBC’s press release with the preview for this show described shiner as a ‘determined’ and ‘tenacious human rights lawyer’.

In fact, a two-day hearing in 2017 decided he was guilty of 22 misconduct charges, including multiple allegations of acting without integrity. In part, that involved paying a middleman to ferret out people in Iraq willing to level accusations against British soldiers.

His firm, Public Interest Lawyers, made more than £1.6 million pursuing unfounded allegations against servicemen and women. In total, he made more than 1,000 vexatious claims of abuse by British troops, and cost the taxpayer £31 million in legal expenses.

that’s what is concealed by the BBC’s phrase ‘evidence of errors and misconduct’.

By contrast, the soldier at the centre of the story, Colour sergeant Brian Wood, was painted as a man traumatised by a brief but intense skirmish in the Iraqi badlands, in May 2004. It’s rare to see an actor give a convincing account as a soldier and Anthony Boyle, who played Wood, didn’t achieve it here.

scenes in which he was racked by post-traumatic stress were powerful and moving — but most of the time he spoke, moved and looked without the inner certainty that service life imparts.

Wood’s relationship with his father Gavin (Alex Ferns), himself an ex- NCO with more than 20 years in the Forces, was strongly drawn.

Neither knew how to show the other affection, except through macho competition, and both dealt with emotions by sealing them in a vacuum chamber.

emotion was everywhere as Davina McCall confronted the ‘change of life’ in Sex, Myths And the Menopause (C4). she parked a trailer on the sea front with headlines plastered across a red billboard: ‘Your sex drive fades,’ ‘Your memory fades,’ ‘Your days are sweaty.’

Her statements resonated with a lot of women. ‘the menopause hit me hard and I really struggled to cope,’ said Davina, who experienced the first symptoms at 44. ‘I was advised not to talk about it, that it was ageing and a bit unsavoury.’

though the title implied this was a show about sex in later life, the saucy business was shunted into the last five minutes — thank goodness, because nobody wants too much of Davina waving a vibrator around like it’s a Biro.

Mostly, her very personal documentary was a plea for better information to be available via GPs. she was also an ardent advocate for the benefits of hormone replacement therapy.

Her explanation of the risks, which involved sitting in a children’s playpen under a cascade of plastic balls, lost me completely. But it’s great to see another medical taboo vanquished.