Fly-on-the-wall documentaries have been ten-a-penny for years, but the right story done well can still take the breath away.
Trawlermen: Hunting the Catch (BBC One) is just one of those series.
It’s not so much fly-on-the-wall as barnacle-on-the-boat, following three British fishing trawlers on the same week in the lead-up to Christmas 2021.
An eye-opener
Two are off the south coast of England, one is in the North Sea off the north of England, and each one has a small-scale snapshot to show of an extraordinary job.
It’s an eye-opener. We see the role sunken wrecks have to play in the capture of pollock, for example, and the empty-handed implications of ‘shooting’ a net in the wrong place.
Other boats ‘potlicking’ (butting in on) a well-researched fishing spot is a hazard, as are seals, which destroy the catch before it’s been landed.
A rich crab catch
Amid all this, the price of the catch fluctuates, especially during the week before a COVID-affected Christmas.
Yet one young first-timer makes as much from one crab as he would from an hour’s work elsewhere. He’s earned it, though. Beautifully shot and professionally revealing, it was a show which taught landlubbers a lot.
Great new drama
Meanwhile, as sure as the tide goes in and out, if Stephen Graham is in a new drama series two things about it will be certain.
One, he will be excellent, because he always is, displaying a perfect balance of sensitivity and menace, depending on the role.
The other certainty is that it will be a tough watch, as we’ve seen in his recent hits like prison drama Time, in which he played a fierce but blackmailed prison guard, and COVID care home drama Help, as harrowing a watch as we’ve had in recent times.
The first episode of The Walk-In (STV) measured up in both fashions, although so far it hasn’t come close to the heights of either of the above.
Created and written by Jeff Pope (A Confession, Little Boy Blue, a stack of ITV’s other finest dramas), it tells the true story of an investigation into recent far-right activity in Britain.
An uncomfortable watch
It isn’t a comfortable watch, beginning with a dramatisation of the real-life attempted murder of Sikh dentist Dr Sarandev Bhambra in Wales in 2015 and ending with the murder of MP Jo Cox the following summer.
In the midst of these events, we meet Graham’s character Matthew Collins, another real-life figure.
In his first scene he’s giving a lecture about the far-right to a group of college students, a model of upright society – until he reveals he knows so much on the subject because he was a Neo-Nazi himself.
A member of a far-right gang in his youth, Collins has for many years investigated Neo-Nazis as part of the group Hope Not Hate.
This opening episode was a soft introduction to him, showing his work alongside colleagues like Nick, played by Jason Flemyng, and the precautions he has to take in his life.
The raw, real-life political edge aside, it felt much like a contemporary crime thriller. Yet Graham is here, and his presence gives any story urgency, so we’ll keep watching.
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