The bar for campaigning British TV is ridiculously high. Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Adolescence were stunningly acted and scripted programmes that sent shockwaves around the world. Like those series (and Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home, the 1966 drama that arguably set the mould for such rabble-rousing gems), Dirty Business identifies something rotten in our society – in this case, the behaviour of privately owned water companies who for at least two decades have made a fortune while knowingly pumping untreated sewage into England’s rivers and seas. Faeces! Sanitary towels! Condoms! Can the rot be stopped? The filmmaker Joseph Bullman makes us part of the answer to that question. Over the course of three episodes that combine acutely distressing scenes with cosy banter and pitch-black satire, we’re basically offered an instruction manual on how to hold the powers-that-be to account and ensure that s*** hits the fan.
Jason Watkins and David Thewlis are warm and nuanced as Peter and Ash, two middle-aged neighbours in the Cotswolds who, from 2019 onwards, pool their knowledge, optimism and tenacity (Peter’s a biologist, Ash is an ex-copper) in hopes of solving the mystery of why the EA (Environment Agency), a supposedly regulatory body, isn’t doing its job when it comes to Thames Water and South West Water. Though these characters have big houses and lots of time on their hands, they are entirely plausible as everymen. Thewlis, in particular, does a fine job with his micro-expressions. He twitches, in a variety of different ways, as the witty, free-jazz-loathing Ash is forced to endure double-speak, pontification and general fobbing off from various execs.
Just as impressive are Posy Sterling and Tom McKay as Julie and Mark Preen, a Birmingham couple whose eight-year-old daughter, Heather, contracted e-coli in 1999, after being exposed to sewage on a blue-flag Devon beach. The actors are completely in sync with a script that always resists milking our tears. There’s no music in the scene where Julie and Mark hold their lifeless child in a hospital room. Later, the handling of Mark’s guilt-induced depression and suicide is even more pared-back. Mark quietly slips out of the story, but he and Heather haunt it.
There’s no denying that a ton of emails are sent and read in Dirty Business. Which may sound yawn-some. Luckily, for big chunks of the time we’re looking at polluted rivers and beaches, which, thanks to cinematographer John Pardue, thrum with Paradise Lost energy. All the murky, watery textures are magnetic (think Hieronymus Bosch meets Man from Atlantis and The Simpsons’ episode with Blinky the three-eyed fish).
Meanwhile, graphics help underline certain convoluted or tricky issues. The horrors of the toxic workplace unfold gently, as we grow to adore two working-class whistleblowers, one of them charged with taking care of dilapidated sewage plants (Asim Chaudhry), one of them based at the EA (Chanel Cresswell), who basically wake up every morning thinking, “I f****ing hate my life!” In the real world, both whistleblowers were men; in Dirty Business, one has been turned into a glamorous young woman, but that Erin Brockovich-esque touch feels justified.
The villains, here, are entertainingly ghastly, including Charlotte Ritchie’s well-spoken EA executive, Sophie, who greenwashes with the most sinisterly plucky of smiles. Britain’s class system, by the way, dominates this story. Alice Lowe is Susan Davy, the CEO of South West Water, who gets patronised by her posh aides. The latter decide Davy is the perfect person to go out and soothe the furious English public, because “you’re almost one of them”. There’s a beat as Davy tries to decide if this is a compliment or an insult. Time and again, in town hall-based sequences showing just how angry the average person is about this issue, we get to hear authentic, working-class accents. And what these ordinary people have to say couldn’t be more eloquent.
Who should we be most angry with? Dirty Business is audaciously keen to point fingers. Former EA bigwigs Sir James Bevan and Dr Toby Willison definitely seem deserving of punishment. And if the CEOs of corporations like the Macquarie Group aren’t named and shamed in the same way, the language used about them is explicit. Ash compares them to “crime bosses”.
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.
