‘This is a bit of a flashback for me,” jokes the hip-hop artist, author and social commentator Darren McGarvey, as he gets into the back of a police car. This time, though, he has chosen to jump in of his own accord, rather than being obliged to. It’s a light moment for The State We’re In – the ambitious, broad and whip-smart documentary he presents, which raises two questions about the state of the UK today. First, how did we get here? And second, what can be done about it? Over three episodes, McGarvey breaks his investigation into three areas: the state of education, the state of our healthcare, and in this opener, the state of the justice system.
McGarvey grew up on a council estate in Scotland and has always been interested in questions of power and poverty. There are plenty of people talking about that but, in a point he returns to again and again, the opportunities for prominent working-class voices addressing issues that reflect their own experiences are vanishingly rare. Fly-on-the-wall documentaries such as Ambulance and 24 Hours in Police Custody provide more of a state-of-the-nation portrait than they are given credit for, but there is no guiding narrative there. The State We’re In is more of a polemic, and an important pulse-taking exercise. It is a relief to view it through the eyes of someone who is not merely an observer, untouched or unaffected by what is going on.
