The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
THE YORKSHIRE JOB CENTRE
ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ
And so, this starkly illuminating series reaches its end. But the story remains open-ended. In 2011, the coalition forces finally left Iraq. Victory Day. Saddam has been executed. Within a few months, sectarian tensions resurfaced, tensions stoked by Iraq’s new president. America shook his hand and turned a blind eye. Problem solved, nothing to see here. Enter ISIS. The catastrophic legacy of the Iraq war has, as far as I’m aware, never been essayed on British television in such brutal, honest, human detail. The entire series revolves around a diverse array of talking heads, most of them exhausted, traumatised, by the sheer horror of it all. It’s compulsive viewing. If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to watch the whole thing on iplayer.
I have mixed feelings about this series. Filmed in a busy Leeds job centre just prior to the Covid crisis, it confronts Britain’s dire unemployment situation (there are 29,000 unemployed in Leeds alone). It follows claimants from various walks of life to illustrate the point that anyone can find themselves in need of benefits, a fact which shouldn’t need restating, but one which blinkered people find difficult to comprehend. It features sympathetic insight from job centre employees and vulnerable people living on a pittance. It highlights the chaotic injustice of Universal Credit. But it also strikes a patronising tone at times: “Aww, these likeable claimants all get short-term happy endings!” I, Daniel Blake it ain’t. Well-meaning yet uneasily compromised.
GREAT CONTINENTAL RAILWAY JOURNEYS
Wednesday,bbc Two, 8pm
Michael Portillo is living proof that Tory politicians can always reinvent themselves, especially if they affect a sort of ersatz chumminess. If you didn’t know any better, you would assume – if you could even be bothered – that this primary-coloured slab of uncooked giblets was a harmless train enthusiast; at worst, a tediously sensible village green Lib-dem. Nah. He’s a voracious Thatcherite, a nasty piece of work. Do not trust him, don’t ever forget. And here he is again,for his umpteenth series of travelogues funded by the notoriously socialist BBC. This week he’s in Germany, where he waxes solemnly about the rise of fascism. It’s like being lectured on the dangers of smoking by Keith Richards.