BBC’S Strike documentary is repeatedly off target
Not even the most ardent trade unionist would claim industrial action makes for scintillating television. For that reason, Strike: Inside the Unions (BBC Two) faced an uphill struggle. This two-part documentary promised an “unprecedented look” at the unions involved in recent strikes across the transport and healthcare sectors. But the results were so dull that viewers may have been tempted to go on strike and switch to Netflix instead.
That wasn’t to dismiss the merits of the industrial action by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the Royal College of Nursing or Unite – the three unions profiled in part one. Or to cast doubt on the sincerity of their leaders: the RMT’S Mick Lynch, the RCN’S Pat Cullen and Unite’s Sharon Graham. The problem was that going to the picket line to pursue inflation-busting pay rises was serious business – and serious business can be dreary when put on the screen.
Of the three, Lynch is perhaps the best-known thanks to his on-air sparring with the likes of Richard Madeley on Good Morning Britain.
But we don’t learn much about the man behind the Madeley-mauling. The most interesting moments were when these big beasts were off-stage. At a nurses’s picket, a woman held
back tears, saying, “the NHS is broken”. And Lynch’s Guy Ritchie-esque sidekick Eddie Dempsey revealed that he learned his negotiating skills at a Deptford Market stall. “That and having kids,” he smiled.
Strike picked up on tensions between workers who’d rather keep their heads down and those who wanted to take to the barricades, but it was a shame these differences weren’t explored in more detail. At a depot in London, a member of Unite despaired as a bus left for its route. “On my own, I can’t win this battle,” she said as the vehicle pulled away.
In the case of the nurses, Cullen wondered if there was an element of misogyny in the Government’s tactics. “The last meeting I had with the Secretary of State, he arrived accompanied by five men,” she said. “The nursing profession is concluding that we are being treated differently because we are 90 per cent female.”
The suggestion that some strikers are perceived differently because of their gender was fascinating. Alas, the episode didn’t delve further. This was an honourable attempt to deliver a more rounded picture of the trade union movement during a period of historic industrial upheaval. But for all those good intentions, as television Strike was a bit of a miss. Ed Power
Ageing action heroes are suddenly in fashion. Harrison Ford (80) has a new Indiana Jones film. Sylvester Stallone (76) is a Mafia capo in Tulsa King, his first foray into television. And now we have Arnold Schwarzenegger (75) making his TV debut in Fubar (Netflix), as a CIA man who is on the point of retirement but called back for one last job.
Like the aforementioned Ford and Stallone projects, Fubar has its cake and eats it: lots of self-deprecating jokes about being older and out-oftouch (“No-one wants to lift heavy weights any more. Everyone wants to go biking with their digital friends,” Schwarzenegger says of Gen Z), but the old guy has still got the moves.
In an entertaining opening sequence, he has smoked a cigar, driven a cool car, jumped on to a moving fire truck, stolen some diamonds from a vault and killed a bunch of baddies, all before you can say, “But that stunt double is clearly 30 years younger than Arnie.”
Actually, Schwarzenegger looks terrific for 75, and is the perfect choice for this. The plot is reminiscent of his Nineties film True Lies: his character, Luke Brunner, has been hiding his CIA work from his family. But when he’s sent to Guyana to rescue a fellow agent, he discovers – spoiler alert – that the agent is his daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro, who played the female pilot in Top Gun: Maverick).
From this point, much of the comedy is of the dad-daughter variety. Luke had been under the impression that Emma was a sweet-natured, clean-living charity worker. When he finds her in Guyana, bare-knuckle boxing with paramilitaries, he is appalled: “You’ve been lying to me for the last decade. And you smoke!”
The show is least successful when it tries to get serious about Emma’s grudges against her dad – not around much during her childhood, blah blah blah. It can also be overly zany, in the form of a Q-like figure (Milan Carter) who is somehow also part of their family. Schwarzenegger isn’t, shall we say, the most subtle of comedy performers. But he’s having a whale of a time and, if you’re a fan of action comedies, so will you. Anita Singh
Strike: Inside the Unions ★★ Fubar ★★★