TV Preview: Make Bradford British | Proud and Prejudiced | The Indian Doctor

CHANNEL 4’s latest reality experiment Make Bradford British is an earnest attempt to address the question of divided communities which hold stereotyped views of each other without much direct contact.

First it sets a group of people the infamous Citizenship Test given to new immigrants: nearly everyone, though born and bred here, fails. Eight of them of carefully weighted diverse views and ethnicities are then chosen to take part in what’s basically Big Brother meets Wife Swap where they first share a house for a few days then pair up and experience each other’s very different lifestyles.

As you might expect if you’ve watched TV before, most of them end up transformed – bonds are forged, painful experiences are shared, tolerance and respect are learned and, yet again, it’s been proved that if people actually talk to each other and make an effort, nearly everyone can get along. The pity of it is, that we have to keep re-learning this lesson again and again, in small dollops. And it’s a sad truth that those with the most intransigent, stupid views about other cultures will never watch a programme like this.

They may, however, tune into Proud And Prejudiced, a dispiriting documentary in which any positive message gleaned from Make Bradford British is trampled underfoot.

It focuses on two confused, angry and notorious men, namely Tommy Robinson, leader of the English Defence League, and Sayful Islam, leader of a small but vocal group of Muslim extremists. Diametrically opposed in ideology, yet united by a shared sense of fear, intolerance and stupidity, these polemical firebrands also both happen to live in Luton, a provincial town where 50 per cent of the population is Muslim.

“They’re breeding ten times faster than us!” squeals Robinson, a tanning salon manager whose group doesn’t just target extremists but Islam in general. Nevertheless, he’s keen to portray the EDL as a liberal, progressive movement, rather than the organisation of choice for those too embarrassed to openly align themselves with the National Front or BNP (of which Robinson is a former member).

Sayful, meanwhile, is a former tax inspector turned destroyer of democracy whose group of noisy irritants are known for picketing military parades and remembrance ceremonies. A disciple of exiled radical sheik Omar Bakri, Sayful is keen to implement Sharia law in order to get those pesky prostitutes, gamblers and gays off the streets of Luton. Naturally, like Robinson, he views his campaign as an altrusitic gesture which will benefit society as a whole. Also, he seems to really enjoy barking through megaphones.

Filmed over a tense year of demonstration, the film draws clear parallels between its subjects as they tirelessly fan the flames of each other’s rhetoric while striving towards their utterly misguided and futile objectives.

A thunderous waste of time, energy and placards, their angry protests feel like little more than an excuse for a bunch of ill-educated attention-seekers to cause trouble and – in the EDL’s case – get drunk and shout at buildings. Or, during one particularly heated exchange, shout “You’re a paedophile!” at members of Sayful’s group, presumably in an attempt to cover all tabloid bogeymen in one fell swoop.

“It’s like a peeing contest, isn’t it?” sighs Sarah Allen, leader of Luton Borough Council’s commendably optimistic ‘Luton In Harmony’ initiative. And she’s right, it is. If only these bile-dripping, dummy-spitting, micturating bozos could team up and channel their anger towards a more deserving target that we can all agree on – Tesco, say, or Piers Morgan – then maybe something positive could come out of it all. Come on boys, get it together. You really do have an awful lot in common after all.

An altogether rosier portrayal of racial integration is found in The Indian Doctor, BBC1’s returning daytime drama in which Sanjeev Bhaskar plays a GP from the Commonwealth who, like many in the early 1960s, answered a call – from Enoch Powell, the then Health Minister, no less – to work for their former colonisers in the NHS. The doc and his wife have so far been welcomed by their neighbours in the small Welsh village and everybody’s rubbing along marvellously with no unpleasant imperial grudges being held.

That is, until the doctor’s mother-in-law arrives to live with them. As this is the kind of mildly comic throwback series in which mothers-in-law are all battleaxes, Indira Joshi’s Pushpa immediately throws her weight around and causes a stir.

It’s all terribly predictable and perfectly suited to anyone in a position to half-watch while indulging in an afternoon nap (of course these days, iPlayer means that daytime programmes needn’t be confined to their timeslots, but it’s my bet that if someone were shown this blind, they’d still guess it was made for afternoons).

Still, there’s something quietly radical about its unobtrusive theme of different ethnicities mostly getting along and this time the series features an interesting based-on-true-events story about a real smallpox outbreak in South Wales, which led to mass emergency vaccinations and quarantine.

• Make Bradford British

Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm

• Proud And Prejudiced

Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

• The Indian Doctor

Mon-Fri, BBC1, 2:15pm

SMALL SCREEN MOVIES

Cop Land

Rating: ****

Today, Channel 4, 12:45am

Sylvester Stallone’s attempt to regain some credibility in a serious role went down like a lead balloon – sadly, for he’s excellent as a partially deaf, overweight and lonely New Jersey sheriff who discovers that the policemen he regards as heroes are corrupt – among them, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

My Dog Tulip

Rating: ****

Tomorrow, BBC 4, 9pm

Endearing animation (for adults) about 1950s writer JR Ackerley’s relationship with his alsatian. Sentimentality is minimal, doggy bodily functions are not and Christopher Plummer’s voiceover dryly relates the story over lovely digitally-rendered drawings.

InterMission

Rating: ***

Today, BBC2, midnight

Flawed but intriguing comedy drama set in Dublin gangland, with Cillian Murphy as a supermarket worker who turns to crime when his girlfriend (Kelly Macdonald) leaves him for a bank manager.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

Rating; ****

Tomorrow, BBC 4, 10:20pm

Though perhaps forgotten here, in Germany the student activists turned terrorists – also known as the Red Army Faction – are still a hotly debated subject. Turning against their parents’ Nazi-tainted generation, they demanded radical change, but their later violent methods and personal in-fighting left a bitter taste. This convincing drama ambitiously covers their 30-year history.