What to watch
The Passengers That Took on the Train Line
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
The 1953 Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt follows a group of disgruntled villagers who take over their local railway line after the government shuts it down, but what would happen if you tried to do that for real? That’s the premise behind this thoughtful film from Jacques Peretti, the investigative reporter behind the acclaimed The Men Who Made Us Fat.
Learning that the South Eastern rail franchise is up for grabs, Peretti assembles a band of commuters who are fed up with a shoddily run network that is frequently late, often cancelled and always overcrowded and convinces them to put their own bid together. But can their idealistic package based on reinvestment and greater communication with passengers succeed? The deceptively light-hearted tone hides some serious points about the way in which our rail network has been sold off to the highest bidder – at one point Peretti notes that given that the French, German and Dutch governments all own parts of British rail franchises then it’s fair to say our railways have already been re-nationalised, just to foreign countries – in addition to being righteously angry about how poorly commuters are treated. Sarah Hughes