Channel 4 has a new let’s-put-cameras-in-a-place-where-trauma-might-happen-and-record-the-deeply-human-stories hourlong. It follows various members of Brighton’s police force as they attempt to control the great revellers of the city every Friday and Saturday night. The problem here of course is: when you put cameras in a delivery room for One Born Every Minute, there hasn’t been an inquiry into the entire industry of midwifing this year, with the city’s head midwife being forced to resign. When I watch Emergency Helicopter Medics, it isn’t immediately after a full summer spent watching news footage of helicopter medics flying into the people they are supposed to be saving, blades first. As recently as summer 2020 people were asking whether Paw Patrol contributed to the ever-present cultural phenomenon of copaganda: now it’s 2022 and I’m already watching a “The police are all right, aren’t they? The police are normal!” series where one of the officers is 20 years old and did most of his training on Zoom.
Sadly, it’s also very well made, gorgeously shot and very, very human, so they’ve got me in a (legal) headlock here. Night Coppers (Tuesday, 9pm, Channel 4) follows various members of the Brighton police force as they slurp McDonald’s in their cars, get baffled by an arson, need eight or nine officers to pin one drunk man’s legs down, and keep going into pubs to ask if they can see their CCTV. It’s not overly dressed as a show where the police are the only line between ourselves and the demonic impulses of always-lurking baddies. Instead, it acts more like a very exquisite portrait of the British night, from that 11pm moment when someone’s already gone home crying, to that darker, grimier, quieter era between the dark hours of the morning and sunrise: bodies lying prone in the road; drunks who have fallen into bushes; lights turning off and on in houses as someone (What is it? Who is it?) does something in the park across the way.
