Here’s one you’ll like: a man comes home to find his wife handcuffed to the wall and his young children missing. They have been taken by child protection services due to the lack of a fridge in the house, which is treated as a sign of neglect. When he confronts law enforcement officials outside, they beat him to death. Decades later, one of the children, now adopted into a Jewish home in Montreal, goes looking for the family she lost, risking the collapse of her new life to do so. I never said it was a joke. Although it turns out there was a fridge, behind the house.
Watching Little Bird (18 August, 9pm, Sky Atlantic), I was reminded that TV is capable of more than mere entertainment, something we lose sight of when we think of it as a purely profit-or loss-making enterprise. I felt the visceral anger and sadness of this story of a First Nations woman caught between cultures, robbed by forces beyond her control and stonewalled by the authorities. Set in Canada, the attitude, if not the events, feel shamefully familiar.
