PICK OF TODAY’S TV

HONG KONG’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, 9.30PM, BBC2

‘I DIDN’T think any Hongkonger would’ve imagined throwing a Molotov Cocktail in their lifetime but we really didn’t have a choice.’ This two-part This World documentary charting the 2019 protests in Hong Kong hears shocking testimony such as this from four young Hongkongers who, under threat of imprisonment, have their identities hidden. Not that you’ll notice. Rather than blurred out faces in dark silhouette, modern AI wizardry creates new human faces, which makes it easier to relate to the people speaking. The scenes of the protests (pictured) are chaotic and terrifying, with one journalist likening it to ‘urban warfare’, while politicians dismissed the hundreds of thousands of Honkongers on the street as a mob of rioters. But for them, the stakes were too high to sit back and let a bill pass that would empower mainland China to extradite whoever they pleased from this former British colony and last stronghold of democracy and freedom. This first episode provides the background to the protests: a shocking murder in Taiwan and the uneasy departure of British rule more than two decades previously.