Rumbles in the Jungle

FILMED at some distance, unaccompanied by any voiceover, it was the final shots of THIS WORLD: CALAIS – THE END OF THE JUNGLE (BBC2) that spoke the most clearly. At a petrol station on the road to the port migrants tried to open the back of a lorry. They succeeded, eventually, a number of men piling in. Then came the police, pulling the doors open and ordering everyone out. One man emerged and dashed away. We didn’t see what happened to the people still inside, nor what happened to the man who fled.

We could guess he’d be trying another lorry, if not that day then the next. On a garage forecourt it was a scene from history and one that, as many people in the film said, will define the future. People will not stop coming from the most poor, most desperate countries to the richer, more stable ones. They will not stop trying because it is human to not stop trying.

Equally parts of human nature, though, are the urge to help, even if the consequences are unhelpful, and the urge to mix up global issues with local ones. We saw both at work in this extraordinary film, shot as the notorious Jungle camp in Calais was cleared by the French police. For the volunteers who had gone there to provide aid it was a clear-cut issue... at first.

Conditions in the camp were appalling and with public support, determination and incredible quantities of on-the-hoof logistical skill, they made a difference. Their reactions grew more complex, though, as the police began clearing the camp. Some were sad to see it go – they had built it after all.

Others were glad but when migrants set light to the shacks, it became a life and death struggle.

Many showed immense bravery in tackling fires and getting people to safety and that provided a temporary distraction from the bigger, unchanging story. When all that remained of the Jungle was a charred, blackened field, people drifted back in smaller numbers.

The volunteers were still there, too, handing out food and tents. It was an almost hopeful scene but for the police being in it trying to move everyone on. They were only playing their part in the cycle though. The glaring absence from this film, as in real life, was anyone trying to stop the wheel turning.

Some folk, of course, just hop off, but you have to be exceptional to make it work.

The thing that makes BEN FOGLE: NEW LIVES IN THE WILD (Channel 5) work is not the wilderness scenery, nor the presenter but the remarkable human beings he meets.

You sensed something different was on the horizon as Ben sailed through the mountainous archipelago around Vancouver Island to be met by a pair of chihuahuas. They weren’t the kind of dogs you’d expect wilderness types like Catherine and Wayne to own but little about Catherine and Wayne was what we’d expected.

In the isolation of the Pacific north-west, the dancer and sculptor duo had built a floating steampunk palace out of salvage.

Decked out in pinks and blues and topped off with a lighthouse, it was more Gaudí than Grizzly Adams. At the same time, no two people could have been more practical, more serious about surviving with what you grew or found, than these two.

You envied Ben’s stay with them and you ended it wondering why all the groovy people had to live in the back of beyond.