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Channel 4 viewers have been left furious after watching the broadcaster’s new docu-drama Dirty Business, about water companies dumping raw sewage.
Starring David Thewlis, Jason Watkins and comedian Asim Chaudhry, the new three-parter takes viewers inside a decade-long investigation into England’s corporate water scandal.
The drama starts in 1999, when Heather Preen, 8, contracts E coli on a filthy Devon beach, resulting in tragedy.
Years later, we follow two unlikely Oxfordshire citizen detectives and real-life campaigners Peter Hammond and Ashley Smith (Thewlis and Watkins), who notice the fish in their local river dying and become determined to get to the root of it.
What follows is a 10-year crusade to clean up Britain’s waterways, starting with their own local River Windrush.
The series is written and directed by Joseph Bullman, who was also behind Channel 4’s docudrama Partygate.
The facts behind the drama are sobering. Since the water companies were privatised in the 1980s, they have extracted billions in dividends and accumulated billions in debt. All the white, dumping untreated sewage into our waterways.
As the drama points out, nobody has ever been prosecuted for the many million discharges across Britain.
The first episode aired on Channel 4 this week and viewers have already been left furious, as the drama gets into the whistleblowers and the victims who encountered sewage-polluted water.
Caterina Jones took to X to label the show a ‘must watch’, while Peter Verney said it was ‘up there with Mr Bates v The Post Office – skewering the water companies and regulators with magnificent savagery.’
Meanwhile, Kerry Fitz was among those who said the drama makes a clear case for renationalising the water companies, writing: ‘Dirty Business on Channel 4 is incredible, urgent and infuriating.
‘How can so many people get away with so many crimes? We need renationalisation of the water industry right now.’
‘Dirty Business was a tough watch last night,’ tweeted Justin. ‘No words to describe the fact that a child died from E coli due to playing in the sea where sewage had been dumped by water companies – shame on them & shame on politicians. Renationalise!’
Dirty Business is available to stream on Channel 4 now.
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