- The Guardian
14 Thursday 1 August 2019
It turns out that the Mars corporation
produces more pet food than chocolate
bars. This doc goes behind the scenes at
its manufacturing and research facility
near Melton Mowbray, where more
than 250 humans and 1,000 animals
collaborate. Cheerily narrated by Robert
Webb, it provides a fascinating glimpse
inside an overlooked industry, but the
scenes of employees taste-testing the
latest products should probably carry
a content warning.
Graeme VirtueSerengeti
8pm, BBC One
As the dry season arrives,
lions laze by the water
hole only for their peace to
be disturbed by a lightning
strike that ignites a
bushfi re. Panic spreads as
things go a bit Watership
Down. Mute John Boyega’s
anthropomorphic
commentary and enjoy
footage of a mighty
exodus. Mike BradleyEat, Shop, Save
8.30pm, ITV
Ranvir Singh hosts a
new series helping more
families overhaul their
lifestyles, budget-wise and
health-wise, in just eight
weeks, with the assistance
of chefs, nutritionists and
shoppers. This week’s
household in dire need
of intervention are the
Laherty family from
Bury, who are champion
chocoholics. Ali CatterallBroke
9pm, BBC Two
This week’s instalment
follows more people who
are in work, but struggling
to make ends meet,
including teen Tyrone
who works a zero-hourscontract and wants to rent
a fl at, but can’t guarantee
he will earn enough.
Scandalously, almost
a million workers are
on zero-hours contracts
and in a similar position.
A clarion call for action. MBPortillo: The Trouble
With the Tories
9pm, Channel 5
The “big beasts” turn
out for Michael Portillo’s
political autopsy:
Johnson, Gove, Blair and
others explain how an
obsession with Europe,
born of a Thatcherite
desire for revenge, has
destroyed the Tories.
Might it also destroy
the UK? A diff erent
programme will have to
care about that. Jack SealeI Am the Night
9pm, Alibi
India Eisley takes centre
stage in a beguiling six-
part murder mystery that
doubles as a commentary
on race relations in the US
in the 1940s. Lost mixed-
race teen Fauna (Eisley)
and disgraced journalist
Jay Singletary (Chris Pine)
fi nd themselves dragged
into a web of secrets. MBLack of interest
... Nicholas
Ofczarek as
Gedeon WinterBritain’s Giant
Pet Food Factory
9pm, Channel 4
And
another
thingI know this is
a losing battle
but it’s arse,
damn you!
Not ass! Arse!
May, Johnson
and now even
subtitles in
Sky Atlantic
German
imports bend to
US imperialism.Review Der Pass, Sky Atlantic
clutching? Simulated pagan rite? Gnomic cross-border
critique of German-Austro immigration policies?
Frankly, like Winter, I fi nd it hard to care. I’ve been
waylaid at these TV borderlands before. First there was
The Bridge , where a body was found lying between
Sweden and Denmark. Then there was The Tunnel , in
which a body was halfway between French and British
jurisdictions, spoiling London lovers’ chances of necking
on the Passerelle des Arts. Now there’s this German-
language drama featuring a dead Bulgarian people-
traffi cker, most likely thwarting smug Bavarians in Audi
estates heading to the pistes (so there’s some good news).
Of all the borders in all the world, why did this Bulgarian
have to pitch up on the least interesting one? Bored at
the milieu and by-numbers script, I spent this episode
dreaming up alternatives. The 38th Parallel, a thriller in
which Pyongyang and Seoul’s fi nest come together like
a Trump-Kim handshake to fi nd out who off ed an inter-
Korean corpse. The Very Hard Border, a silent movie set
in a post-Brexit dystopia in which the Gardai and the
PSNI aren’t talking any more, so solve Boris Johnson’s
murder using hand gestures. Carry on Up the Punjab, a
Bollywood musical set on the Kashmiri frontier, featuring
a showstopping dance number with dressy border guards
and the Imran Khan singalong It’s Just Not Cricket.
Back to Mitteleuropa. In Munich, a jaded hack gets
a fl ash drive in the mail. Say what you want about
German news gathering, at least the München Zeitung
correspondent has his own sumptuous offi ce, rather
than hot-desking in journalism’s equivalent of The
Hunger Games as happens at most newspapers. It
contains what purports to be the last words of the
Bulgarian corpse, a forced confession that goes something
like this: “I smuggled people ... Yadda yadda ... My
punishment will be your salvation. Blah de blah ... The red
time of year is coming.” Corbyn at No 10? Serial slaying?
I’m no expert in enigmatic threats, but probably the latter.
I liked one scene. The odd cop couple interview the
corpse’s jailed cousin, who turns out to be unrepentant,
misogynistic and sociopathic – the ideal skillset for the
kind profession of leaving refugees to die in an abandoned
truck. The cousin tells them the family motto: “You send
20 men, we send back 40 balls.” My family motto was very
diff erent: “You send us your shuttlecocks, we’ll bring the
double entendres.” Which is why we had no friends.
But the cousin has a point: whoever crossed his
criminal mob family by offi ng the corpse in the
mountains will get got. At the end of episode one,
a snowplough pulls over so as not to crush a naked
woman. She is the woman from an earlier scene, probably
a sex worker who visited the chauff eur-driven alpha
male at his lair for the usual reasons. My money says the
alpha male has been punished by the Bulgarian family
for offi ng their own. Cut to a gang of roughnecks around
a brazier, one of whom cackles: “Shall I tell you a secret?”
As anyone who has ever watched TV knows, cackling
goons around a brazier means only one thing. No good.★★★☆☆
TV and radio
A
man’s frozen body lies in the mountain
pass, one half in Germany, the other
in Austria. Which police force will
investigate the murder? “One of us
gets the head, the other the ass,” says
the Austrian detective Gedeon Winter,
Falstaffi an of girth if darker of mirth.
Winter speaks not so much with the wisdom of
Solomon as with a complete lack of professional interest.
W hen tasked with work or socialising, he would rather
not – both get in the way of boozing and sucking illicitly
medicated sugar cubes. Despite his terrible tailor
(“You dress like a pimp,” says one colleague) and a BMI
unsuited to alpine police work – he resembles Wallander ;
not Branagh nor Krister Henri ksson but Rolf Lassgård, the
sweaty one with diabetes – Winter (Nicholas Ofczarek) is
far and away the most diverting presence in Der Pass.
His German opposite, Ellie Stocker (Julia Jentsch),
all smiles and sensible parka, glares at Winter, silently
reproving him for his coarseness and wondering what is
this guy’s major malfunction. We already have an inkling :
most likely it’s to do with That Thing That Happened in
Vienna, which means (as always) that Winter has been
exiled to a place where crime is negligible.
How, though, could Winter not be intrigued by this
very stiff stiff? After all, the body has been posed on the
border after being stabbed in woods near an abandoned
Mercedes. The corpse’s passport is Syrian, but its DNA is
that of a Bulgarian with previous for people-traffi cking.
And what’s the deal with the horse’s tail the corpse is
Of all the borders
in all the world,
a corpse had to
appear on this one
Stuart Jeff ries
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