Baghdad Central, Channel 4, Monday at 10pm
The disaster of the American invasion of Iraq was clearly complex but the immediate dismissal of the country’s police force is often cited as the worst decision of the campaign.
The police were corrupt, had Saddam loyalists and many were human rights abusers, but without law and order and an embittered cadre of police officers left unemployed, the militias, many run by Iran and Qasam Soleimani, took over.
This is at the fulcrum of Channel 4’s new six-part crime drama, Baghdad Central.
Our hero is Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji, a former inspector in the police whom the British and Americans seek to recruit for their new force.
He realises that taking American dollars makes him a target, but life in Baghdad is complicated and at the end of episode one Muhsin decides it’s his best option.
His eldest daughter Swansan, who was already working for the Americans, has gone missing and his youngest daughter, Mrouj, needs kidney dialysis.
It’s a fairly standard narrative. The cold eyed, capable father making difficult life decisions and facing personal risk to save his children.
Think Taken, but with a bit of added geo-politics.
Before he even gets to track down the bad guys who took his daughter however, Muhsin has to deal with being mis-identified by the Americans and tortured as a suspected member of the militias.
This involves being waterboarded and having his moustache ripped off, allowing Muhsin to give us the kind of humour under fire beloved of our gritty heroes.
Asked what happened to his facial hair when he returns home, he quips: “It’s been confiscated. It will be sent to Washington as an example of Iraqi culture.”
Boom. You just know that Muhsin is going to beat up a lot of people before this series ends.
It’s a pity though that the dialogue is principally in English and not Arabic.
Baghdad Central is being praised as a drama telling the story of the US invasion from the side of Iraqis but this is weakened by the limited presence of the region’s language.
It shouldn’t be a barrier to success, noted Scandinavian and Italian crime dramas have shown that audiences don’t mind subtitles.
Baghdad Central had a solid, engaging opening and may well be successful but there is nothing spectacular or original here.
***
Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild, Channel 5, Tuesday at 9pm
Ben Fogle's fascinating series about people living in the wild must have the carbon footprint of a climate change conference in Davos.
Over 11 series, Fogle has circumnavigated the globe numerous times. By my count he has visited remote parts of 33 countries in five continents to show us people living pared back, simple lives.
That irony aside, it’s very watchable TV. For the last episode of this series, we met Dan Price who lives in a “hobbit hole” in Oregon in the US.
Dan doesn’t want to be part of the “huge mess out there” so he built a tiny home partially underground.
His doorway, which he crawls through, is little bigger than a dog kennel’s and he can’t stand upright inside.
Dan is very close to nature and makes his own cereal from dried weeds he picks in the valley, but clearly he has some issues.
As ever though, there are lessons for us from New Lives In The Wild about how our own lives are overcomplicated with unnecessary stuff.
Dan may not be the example we would wish to follow but the programme’s message should be - a simple life is the cure to many ills.
