A powerful oral history of the summer Britain burned
All these years later, an air of unreality still surrounds the London riots. On the 10th anniversary, The Riots 2011: One Week in
August (BBC Two) sought to explain why London had exploded into a wave of violence and looting that quickly spread to other cities.
There were many voices in this grim, gripping 90-minute film that conveyed the scope of the unrest and the many lives shattered. This cast of contributors included those of the rioters and looters, police officers, then-acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner Tim Goodwin and political figures such as Craig Oliver, director of communications for David Cameron (who was holidaying with his family when the powder keg went off).
Rioter Joshua “Coinz” Owens had few misgivings about his part in the chaos, which he said was pushback against years of excessive policing. “Maybe we could have structured our frustration a lot better,” he shrugged. “It’s like someone being pushed into the corner… I don’t regret it.”
The adversarial nature of the relationship between the black community in Tottenham and police was outlined by activist Stafford Scott. Violence had flared outside the police station where protestors gathered following the shooting by police of
29-year-old father of six Mark Duggan.
Scott described plain-clothes officers driving around Broadwater Farm Estate, where Duggan had grown up, holding aloft two fingers. This was in reference to the killing in 1985 of PC Keith Blakelock during rioting at Broadwater Farm, he suggested. According to Scott, the gesture was intended to signal that the police had got one back for the death of Blakelock.
“People have to feel they have no stake in society. Nothing to lose,” he said of the riots. He did, however, add that the looters who took to the streets ultimately undermined the quest for justice by Duggan’s family (a public inquest subsequently ruled the killing to have been lawful).
This was a powerful oral history that communicated the sheer scale of the anarchy that rippled through British cities. But there were no comforting conclusions to be drawn. “The political classes learned nothing because they didn’t ask any questions,” said Scott.
There was an even darker assessment from Tariq Jahan, whose son was killed by rioters in Birmingham. “Do not frustrate the people to the degree where they will rise up again,” he said. It was a bleak end to a film that, while succeeding in placing the disturbances in the context of their times, left open the question of whether anything had changed in the intervening decade.
Horrible Histories spin-off Ghosts (BBC One) aired right up against the 9pm watershed. And yet, setting aside a running visual gag about a trouserless politician from beyond the grave, the supernatural comedy packed the giddy punch of classic kids telly.
The jokes were broader than a poke in the eye with a plank of wood. Production values screamed Cbeebies on a budget (even as they harked back to the glory days of Rentaghost and early
Blackadder). The cast chewed so much scenery they were probably up all night washing wallpaper paste out of their mouths. But the half hour whizzed by.
Returning for a third season, Ghosts, written by and starring a troupe of
Horrible Histories regulars, also had the lived-in quality of old slippers. We were reintroduced to Alison and Mike (Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smithbynoe), penniless owners of crumbling Button House.
Owing to a complicated chain of events back in series one, Alison can communicate with the house’s motley collection of undead, among them: 17th-century lady Kitty (Lolly Adefope) and Tudor toff Humphrey (Laurence Rickard), complete with detachable head. The trouserless politician is Julian (Simon Farnaby), a Conservative MP who passed away in the early 1990s in a compromising position.
Ghosts is all about squeezing laughs from the plight of forsaken poltergeists destined to spend all eternity haunting the same tatty mansion. So it was apt that the story itself walked in circles somewhat, with the plot having barely advanced since it began in 2019.
More interesting were flashbacks to Humphrey’s origin story: while sheltering revolutionaries conspiring against Elizabeth I, he’d given the slip to soldiers kicking down his door but he lost his head when two decorative swords fell off the wall.
This zinger was slapstick straight from a panto matinee. As with the rest of Ghosts, though, it was funny and delivered with such good cheer it was impossible not to get caught up in the spirit of things. Ghosts was never scary. But it was spooktacularly likeable.
The Riots 2011: One Week in August ★★★★ Ghosts