A new television drama-documentary is reigniting public anger over the state of England's rivers and seas. Dirty Business, directed by Joseph Bullman, tells the true story of a retired police officer and an Oxford professor who uncovered widespread sewage dumping. The programme is being compared to ITV's Mr Bates vs the Post Office for its potential to force a change in official attitudes.
Set in the Cotswolds in 2016, the drama follows Ashley Smith and Peter Hammond, two neighbours who notice brown pollution in the River Windrush. Smith, a former 'Line of Duty' detective, and Hammond, a mathematics professor, use their skills to expose decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure. The narrative is interwoven with real footage shot by campaigners, showing the extent of environmental damage across the country.
A second storyline begins in 1999, when Mark and Julie Preen take their daughters to Dawlish in Devon. Eight-year-old Heather steps in a polluted stream and dies from E coli O157 poisoning within two weeks. Although the cause of the outbreak was not definitively identified, the drama highlights the coroner's recommendations, including tertiary sewage treatment in the area.
The film also examines the regulatory failures that allowed the crisis to worsen. It features a 2008 scene in which Environment Agency staff are told that water companies will be responsible for monitoring their own pollution, a policy that was later expanded under David Cameron's austerity cuts. The drama opens with archive footage of Margaret Thatcher in 1989 predicting that water privatisation 'will go very successfully indeed'. Dirty Business is a controlled, furious indictment of a system that prioritises profit over public health and the environment.
