Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy; Sterling Point

“There isn’t much in Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy (Netflix) that we didn’t already suspect, but the facts are stark and shocking. Mass-produced chicken pollutes our waterways with faeces (in a year enough chicken faeces is generated in America to cover London) while also polluting our guts. Globally, there are now more obese children than hungry children; an additive used in processed chicken is also used to lubricate condoms. And if babies grew at the same rate as modern “frankenchickens” they would be the size of an adult pig in two months. While noble, a documentary-maker putting their body on the line has also been done, more memorably, by Morgan Spurlock, whose Super Size Me briefly wiped the smile off Ronald McDonald’s chops in 2004. But props to the ebullient Gilligan for adopting this approach for the younger Netflix audience (and, I earnestly hope, my teenage daughters, who will definitely find their dad a little less keen to hand over 20 quid for a quiet life when they ask for their next Popeyes or Wingstop). As Clarkson’s Farm shows, the streamers are just as capable of making valuable public service films as the BBC or Channel 4.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Having conveyed shock and horror at what he learns about the industry, he then heads off to a British chicken farm in Lincolnshire with some animal rights activists in the dead of night in a bid to film the current state of chicken welfare. Here Big Chicken gets genuinely tense, with Gilligan an unlikely frontliner. Unfortunately, he bottles it (“My girlfriend wouldn’t let me come with you,” he tells the plainly unimpressed activists at the last minute) and anyway, all of the chicken warehouses have had security tripled and the activists can’t get in. And so Big Chicken fizzles out with the usual legalese closing-title cards in which the chicken plenipotentiaries cover their impeccably lawyered bottoms with disclaimers. The goal of these type of documentaries is always, as Gilligan says at the finish, to “start a conversation”. Big Chicken certainly does that, but it’s always the same conversation that leads to the same conclusions: eat less meat. Check the ingredients. If you don’t know what’s in it, don’t eat it. And if you see someone on social media banging on about the wonders of fried chicken, maybe ask why.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“If escapism is the brief, then Sterling Point fulfils it expertly. Sure, it doesn’t carry the intensity or the existentialism of its edgier counterparts. But I was surprised by how long I wanted to stay with these characters and inhabit their island bubble. It kept subverting my expectations. I didn’t want to go home.”
Micha Frazer-Carroll, The Guardian