A soul-stirring, supersonic ride with the Mcgregors
‘It’s going to be quite an adventure,” said Ewan Mcgregor at the outset of RAF at 100 with Ewan and Colin Mcgregor (BBC One, Sunday) and you couldn’t help believing it. The introductory sequence had just held out the soul-stirring prospect of First World War biplanes in mock combat, a dogfight between a Spitfire and its Second World War arch-rival the Me 109, and a Cold War-era Vulcan bomber in flight.
It was all my Airfix-inspired childhood dreams made real, and the tantalising promise of an armchair ride in one of the world’s most advanced jet fighters as well. What I wasn’t anticipating was how moving this documentary, presented by the film star and his former RAF fighter-pilot brother, would be in parts.
Made to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Air Force, the programme had ambitions that it could tell the “whole story” – a little far-fetched for a 90-minute film. Really, it was two stories: one of machines, the other of people. Opening with Ewan excitedly preparing for a supersonic flight in a cutting-edge Typhoon fighter, it cut back to the RAF’S origins in flimsy “paper and string” aircraft. Some archive footage of the first planes to partake in warfare said everything necessary regarding the intervening leaps and bounds of technological progress. A reconstructed First World War dogfight illustrated entertainingly the perils of being a pioneer pilot when your maximum speed was 70mph, and the enemy’s was 110mph.
What proved so affecting, though, was that while the aircraft had changed beyond recognition over a century, the spirit of those flying them had not. Spitfire pilot Geoffrey Wellum’s memories of the intense camaraderie, exhaustion and “ghosts” of the Battle of Britain found a ringing echo when Sea Harrier pilot David Morgan recalled the intensity of emotion, and lingering trauma, of shooting down two Argentine planes in the Falklands War.
Courage and chutzpah radiated still from Mary Ellis and Joy Lofthouse, Air Transport Auxiliary – and equality – trailblazers who piloted all manner of fighters and bombers during the Second World War. The stress of being scrambled for a possible nuclear Armageddon was still visible in the faces of former Vulcan pilots Jonny Tye and Martin Withers, but so was their pride in the role that they played in Britain’s defence.
In the end, for all the sleek beauty and edge-of-seat excitement that drew me to the machines featured, what lingered was the bravery of those who had flown and fought in them.
There was tangible emotion too in Reggie Yates: Searching for Grenfell’s Lost Lives (BBC Two, Sunday) as the radio host and TV presenter set out to put a face on some of the victims of last year’s Grenfell Tower disaster in west London.
“Who were they – these women, these men, these children – before they became names and faces on a memorial wall?” asked Yates. Any doubts that it was a question that needed asking, or deserved answering, were dispelled by the end of the film. Largely by reminding viewers of the depersonalising effect such a largescale disaster can have (the death toll was 71, with a further 223 made homeless). No matter how awful the news footage, unless we lost a loved one ourselves or were otherwise directly affected, the numbers are so overwhelming that the impact at an individual level can often be lost.
Yates began by picking out two of the people whose names were most often mentioned on the wall: 21-yearold British-moroccan Yasin El-wahabi, and 12-year-old Columbian Jessica Urbano Ramirez. He spoke to friends and locals, building up a picture of Yasin in particular, a much-liked community youth leader believed to have not been in the tower when the fire started, but killed when he went in to try to rescue his family, all five of whom perished on the 21st floor.
Yates was particularly adept at gently building a sense of the victims as individuals and how their varied life experiences had brought each of them to Grenfell Tower. The case of Syrian refugee Omar Alhajali, who recounted the story of how he had escaped the fire, but lost his 25-year-old brother Mohammed with whom he had fled Syria three years ago to forge a new life in London, seemed doubly tragic. But, of course, in many ways that was the point of this film: every one of the lives lost or ruined by Grenfell is a tragedy in its own right.
RAF at 100 with Ewan and Colin Mcgregor Reggie Yates: Searching for Grenfell’s Lost Lives