Television

Cathy Nugent reviews Derailed, BBC1, Tuesday 20 September This drama-documentary of the Paddington rail disaster didn’t really tell us anything new about that appalling event — most of the facts came out at the public enquiry and were documented in the Cullen Report of the enquiry. It did however demonstrate in devastating detail exactly who was to blame for the disaster — a culture of corporate disregard for safety and drive for profit among the train operating companies and Railtrack; layers of incompetent and disorganised bureaucracy; individuals who spend their lives enriching shareholders...

Cathy Nugent reviews Panorama, BBC1, 28 August John Ware’s investigation into the leadership of Britain’s Muslim communities, focussing on the role of the Muslim Council of Britain, has been variously condemned as a “witch-hunt” and a “stitch up”. Protests came from the MCB itself and other Muslim organisations but also the Guardian journalist Madeline Bunting. As far as I could see there was little that was factually incorrect in the programme; the protestations were more to do with defending certain streams of political Islam (which the programme looked at). That said, this was not a good...

Clive Bradley reviews Lost, Wednesdays, Channel Four Contemporary American television drama often has an ambition and scale which less than a decade ago would have been thought impossible, more suited for cinema — and which dwarfs anything attempted on this side of the Atlantic. Lost has both ambition and scale. A plane crashes en route from Australia to the United States, stranding its survivors on an inhabited island, where gradually they realise no rescue is coming, and that in addition to the expected difficulties of finding food and water and getting along with each other, they must deal...

Laura Schwartz reviews "Victoria’s Big Fat Documentary", 21 July, BBC 1 New Labour, Heat magazine and Weightwatchers are all united in their enthusiastic support for losing weight. As a result, the quest for thinness has acquired an almost moral quality. Conversely, being over-weight is equated with greed, laziness and stupidity — with being a bad person. Victoria Wood’s Big Fat Documentary showed how this obsession with food, eating and dress-size has permeated our national and individual psyches. Through interviews with celebrities, executives of dieting companies and the dieters themselves...

Up until recently I didn't have that much time for Bob Geldof. The lyrics to Do They Know It’s Christmas? were ill-conceived and the recent Band Aid 20’s repeat performance was even more ridiculous — given that the main cause of the crisis in Sudan that it was meant to help was war and not famine. However, watching Geldof in Africa made me to reconsider the man. Geldof on Africa was very good because it showed all the different sides of the continent — not just the war, disease and starvation, but also the astounding natural beauty and the more mundane, but still remarkable, everyday life of...

By Pat Yarker Before the General Election Channel 5 screened Classroom Chaos, a video-diary-cum-documentary produced by Roger Graef. Graef pioneered so-called fly-on-the-wall documentaries for television. He has a track-record as a maker of programmes which go behind the scenes, take important issues seriously, stimulate and inform public debate and sometimes help bring about significant reforms. Over twenty years ago, his series about the police in action led to big improvements in the way they treat rape-survivors. The idea for “Classroom Chaos” involved a teacher signing up with a “supply”...

Louise Gold reviews Last Rights , Channel Four Set in urban London, and the closed rooms of 10 Downing Street, Last Rights is a film that brings the seriousness of political corruption to street-level Britain. It depicts how an average inner city teenager catches a glimpse of the cynical, arrogant and dangerous plans law-makers could make if we let them; the reality behind all the personable speech-making and hand-shaking of the Government. The point is to show how the teenager, Max, can make a far greater impact on the system than he thinks, the system that has him down as apathetic and...

Mike Rowley reviews The impressionists (Channel 4) This programme made a refreshing change from Channel Four's usual. It showed that it is possible to talk about art accessibly for two hours without becoming tedious. The most "political" of the four major figures considered was Gustave Courbet, the great precursor of Impressionism. Born in 1819 in a rural area of France, Gustave Courbet moved to Paris in 1841, ostensibly to study law. Instead, he turned to painting and plunged into the bohemian revolutionary scene in Paris, which included many socialists and anarchists, including the anarchist...