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.
The Cotswolds, 2016. Two neighbours, recently retired and hungry for a project, notice brown murk in the previously beautiful River Windrush. By profession, Ashley Smith (David Thewlis) was a real-life “Line of Duty” cop investigating corrupt cops, while Peter Hammond (Jason Watkins) was an Oxford maths professor. Together they look into a curious dumping of sewage and, when the explanation given by the privatised local water company doesn’t add up, they dig in. Ash’s infallible nose for dishonesty, married with the algorithm Peter devises to find patterns in confusing data, builds a picture of water infrastructure destroyed by three decades of underinvestment, leading to environmental calamity on a staggering scale across the country, with thousands of instances of rivers and seas tainted by untreated sewage. Real footage, shot by campaigners to show the extent of the damage, is woven into the drama.
