Dirty Business; AI Confidential with Hannah Fry

“We know, because ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office showed us, that television drama can suddenly intensify public disgust at a scandal, forcing official attitudes to change. Will Dirty Business, Joseph Bullman’s drama-documentary on the great English and Welsh water pollution shame – whose storylines are based on real-life events – be another TV show that moves the needle? If this doesn’t do it, perhaps nothing will: this is a fist in the face, a blast of controlled fury that mounts an unanswerable case for the prosecution.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Dirty Business is also very funny in parts, thanks to good writing and excellent performances from Watkins, Thewlis, Charlotte Ritchie, as an Environment Agency flak, and Asim Chaudry, as a whistleblowing Thames Water Engineer. Mostly, though, Dirty Business will just bring back memories of Mr Bates in both a good and a bad way. Good because it is superlative television, telling a story that pulls on a small thread until a whole scandal unravels. Bad because if you weren’t angry before, you will be now.”
Benji Wilson, Telegraph

“At times, it gets so dark and surreal that you may have to pinch yourself. These are essentially real events and real people. And while the Channel 4 lawyers would have pored over every syllable, it’s defiantly unmuzzled. A show with bite and poignancy. And gallons and gallons of dirt.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“Bullman made Channel 4’s Partygate, which skewered the hypocrisy of the Tory party during the Covid years. It’ll be interesting to see how politicians react to Dirty Business. If David Cameron, Liz Truss and Labour’s one-time environment minister, Steve Reed, have any shame (debatable), they will be left squirming by the real-life footage used here. It is not pretty viewing for Sir Keir Starmer, either. From now on, I’ll always check the Surfers Against Sewage app before swimming in the sea, but Dirty Business is about so much more than what we do on our holidays. There’s a by-election coming up, with the Greens hammering home the message that how we treat our environment is the opposite of a middle-class issue. Should the Greens’ Hannah Spencer – aka Hannah the plumber – win Gorton and Denton, she may well have reason to send a thank-you note to Channel 4.”
Charlotte O’Sullivan, Independent

“This three-part story has overtones of Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the ITV drama that made millions fully aware of the Horizon scandal. Like that series, this one celebrates the decency and determination of average Englishmen with their blood up. But a bitterly sad story is also laced through it. In flashbacks, we meet a family on holiday in Devon, where the eight-year-old daughter contracts an E. coli virus from sewage gushing onto the beach. Her lingering death, and the disbelieving grief of her parents, are far more upsetting than even the most graphic footage of polluted rivers. It’s impossible to watch this drama without feeling sick with anger at it all.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“This feels like an essential series as we teeter at the edge of a new world. Which poses another question: isn’t it time we had a weekly science show on this kind of thing? Let’s call it, say, “Tomorrow’s World”.”
James Jackson, The Times