one side of his face, Creed
showed two of his short films
to Beard: Shit and Sick.
I am not going to lie: seeing
a Dame Commander of the
British Empire watching
some woman curling one out
(work it out), while talking to
a panto nitwit with a peg on
his ear, was by far the funniest
thing I saw last week.
One of the merits of doing
a programme on unseen art is
that the viewer hasn’t, by
definition, ever seen it. You
felt as if you were constantly
being “confronted”, to use a
Beard word, with new ideas
and images. This made a fresh,
inquisitive and sometimes
arresting programme, if you
ignored the really gross bits
and Beard’s terminal urge
to reduce everything to
“boundaries” and “the ethical
dilemmas of people’s pain”.
On Channel 5 there was a
serious drama in the shape
of The Teacher, starring
Sheridan Smith. It felt like one
of those shows that ought to
have come with a million
disclaimers telling us this was
based on a true story.
It turned out to be one of
those rare things — a crime
drama that was entirely the
product of someone’s
imagination. Smith played
a fictional teacher, Jenna,
who was accused of sleeping
with one of her pupils. She
was wholly believable as a
drunk, slutty, bewildered hot
mess of a woman whose idea
of fun was blacking out in the
local disco.
Some of it, of course, felt
hammy; so many bad things
happened to her that at one
point Smith began to look as
if she was running out of
strangulated expressions.
There are only so many times
an actress can gasp at vicious
emails or poison pen letters
or evil internet posts or
slut-shaming pictures of her
own breasts, or whatever else
the writers of this show chose
to throw at her.
But it was a neat little show,
and well acted, if you ignored
the nagging feeling none of
this would ever happen.
I managed to catch the
finale of And Just Like That ...,
having thoroughly enjoyed
the whole series. It’s rare to
find any comedy that’s truly
transgressive and provocative
these days. Judging from the
furious, repulsed reviews
describing the women as
hideous, tedious, old and
unfunny, I’d say the girls have
nailed it again.
Each episode brought you
something gasp-worthy and
strange. In the finale it was
Charlotte’s “flash period”,
which is, in my view, up there
with many of the things Mary
Beard looked at. Then there
was the scene where Miranda
has sex with her non-binary
lover in Carrie’s kitchen, while
Carrie, recovering from a hip
operation and unable to get
to the loo, wets herself in the
bedroom. Don’t say they don’t
tackle the big subjects.
Crucially, it dares to send
up the stupidity of “woke”
culture in lacerating, minute
detail. The women have been
lambasted for presenting
themselves as clumsy and
unaware, accessorising
themselves with black, Asian
and non-binary friends. To
which I answer, have you
ever met shallow, fashion-
obsessed, faddish white
women in New York? It’s so
accurate it’s practically a
documentary. cDogged Hamza Syed
and Brian Reed present
The Trojan Horse AffairA scandal at school
Serial is the breakthrough
American investigative series
that brought podcasts to a
mass audience. Launched in
October 2014 with Sarah
Koenig’s re-examination of
a 1999 murder in Baltimore,
that first series became a
monster word-of-mouth hit
— the benchmark against
which all subsequent true
crime podcasts (and there
have been many) are
measured. It certainly made
waves: in Steve Martin’s
podcast-spoofing TV series
Only Murders in the Building,
Tina Fey’s Cinda Canning is
modelled on Koenig; The New
York Times paid $25 million
for Serial Productions.
Now the audio game-
changer has made a divisive
UK story the focus of a new
eight-part series, its first
overseas outing. The Trojan
Horse Affair investigates the
national furore that erupted in
2014 after an anonymous letter
— first sent to a council leader,
then leaked to The Sunday
Times — claimed there was a
plot to Islamise state schools
in Birmingham and beyond. A
document, which the letter
writer claimed to have found
on their boss’s desk, laid out a
blueprint for Muslim parents
to infiltrate governing boards
and destabilise secular head
teachers. Objectives included
lobbying against sex
education and campaigning
for more gender segregation
and Islamic worship.
The letter was swiftly
dismissed as suspect, but its
allegations (made against a
backdrop of radicalised
Britons leaving to join Islamic
State) were taken extremely
seriously. Michael Gove, the
education secretary at the
time, announced an inquiry
headed by Peter Clarke, a
former counterterrorism
chief. Ofsted made emergency
inspections of 21 schools,
and some previously
judged as outstanding
were put into specialmeasures. Fifteen teachers
and governors were removed,
although in 2017
the case against many of
them collapsed.
What Hamza Syed, one of
the presenters, wanted to
know was: who wrote the
letter? Syed is the star of this
podcast, co-presented by
S-Town’s Brian Reed and
edited by Koenig. When the
Trojan Horse allegations
broke, Syed was a young
doctor in Birmingham. But in
2017 he decided to retrain as
an investigative journalist. If
more “brown people” were
journalists, he figured, stories
about British Muslims might
feel more recognisable.
Before starting his course,
he went to see Reed give a talk
about podcasting. Afterwards
Syed stayed behind to tell Reed
about the schools scandal that
had engulfed his home town
and his aim to discover who
had fired that smoking gun.
Weeks later Reed called from
New York offering to copilot
Syed’s school project.
Reed and Syed make a
classic investigative pairing.
Reed, the older mentor, is
determinedly impartial; Syed,
a rookie, lets his prejudices
intrude. They set up an
operation room in Syed’s
parents’ bedroom while they
are away and nickname
themselves Holmes and
Watson.
There are dressing-downs
and storming-offs, but
affection too. Reed goes to
Syed’s graduation ceremony.
“He won an award, I was
proud,” he reports. Syedintroduces the next segment:
“Once I became an award-
winning journalist ...”
It is intriguing to think what
Americans will make of the
twists and turns of Brum
bureaucracy. This is a knotty,
Kafkaesque tale steeped in
ugly accusations of bullying,
corruption, sexism and
racial prejudice. Lives and
reputations have been ruined.
From their outsider-insider
perspective, Reed and Syed
set out to offer a definitive
account of a story that
polarised Britain. Small
spoiler alert: they fail.
Where they do succeed,
however, is in creating the
most thought-provoking
podcast since Sweet Bobby.
“The idea of the Trojan horse,”
Reed says, “this idea which
infected every aspect of the
events we were investigating,
that Muslims participating in
civic life in the West are in
actuality using democratic
systems duplicitously as a
vessel to sneak into societies
that are not really their own
to subvert them. This trope
— it’s a racist lie.”
There is something in that,
but other peoples’ truths are
discounted. On The Sunday
Times website on August 10,
2014, five Birmingham head
teachers spoke, not just on
the record but on camera, of
alleged intimidation by
hardline Muslim governors.
All but one had left their jobs.
One, Bhupinder Kondal, had
been the head of Oldknow
Academy in Small Heath. You
will not hear her story here.
Instead the characterful
Achmad Da Costa — dismissed
as chairman of governors at
Oldknow after the primary
school was criticised by
Ofsted for using state funding
to take Muslim pupils and
teachers on a trip to Saudi
Arabia — flies with our
intrepid duo to Perth,
Australia, to help to pursue a
lead that might exonerate him
and the acting head teacher
appointed after Kondal’s
departure. It doesn’t.
Serial tells an
entertaining story,
but not one that
feels closer to the
truth. cPATRICIA
NICOL
The makers of Serial delve into Britain’s Trojan Horse affair
| PODCASTS
SANDY HONIG
6 February 2022 13