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4 hours ago
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Channel 4 is often criticised for not being the bold and ballsy network it once was. That may be true – but where else on British TV would you find a reality docuseries in which participants recreate the treacherous journeys undertaken by asylum seekers? Go Back to Where You Came From (Monday, 9pm) has already been the subject of social media speculation and furious comment pieces, all before a single episode has aired. A refugee charity derided it as “A Place in the Sun meets Benefits Street”, which is a truly horrifying combination, but also – unfortunately – made me want to watch it more. At the other end of the spectrum, people with union jacks in their X bios have decided that it is “lefty propaganda” and a PR effort for those they refer to as “illegals”.
Go Back to Where You Came From is based on an Australian series, which proved equally divisive at first but was eventually praised as “ambitious” and “confronting”. This version is certainly in-your-face: Nathan, who owns a haulage company back in Barnsley, is essentially a human foghorn, and opens the series bellowing about how illegal immigration is akin to rape and murder. A chef called Dave says he wants the Royal Navy to set up landmines to blow up small boats, and offers a memorable, if tasteless, soundbite as he looks across the Dover coast: “it’s like rats – you leave food out and they keep coming”. Soon they will be on the streets of Mogadishu and Raqqa, hollering far worse. Meanwhile, the producers let a Welsh woman called Jess complain that everyone in town calls her a “flap guzzler” because she’s gay, and then – when she remembers she’s here to make a documentary about immigration – film her shaking in fear at the sight of a local asylum hotel. Nathan, Dave and Jess’s views are roughly in line with those of another participant, Chloe, while Bushra and Mathilda are more sympathetic to the plight of those hoping to make a new life in the UK. As Bushra points out, if the shoe was on the other foot, most people rallying against unauthorised border crossings wouldn’t hesitate to find a safe place for their families to live.
On the ground in Somalia, Nathan, Jess and Mathilda travel in an armoured vehicle with a former US army officer, and are visibly shaken when they’re stopped by men with guns at a checkpoint. Nathan styles it out and continues to insult the country loudly at a market. Soon, bystanders are spotted snapping pictures of the group and they’re whisked away again in their car. Was there really a security threat from the terror group Al-Shabaab, or was Nathan just scaring the locals?
Of course, these are individuals who bear responsibility for the views they choose to air on national television. However, most of their talking points feel as if they’ve been directly ripped from the news outlets that have turned struggling people against one another for decades. As for Chloe, she has direct experience of that corner of the media; while studying PPE at Oxford she appeared on TV as a Conservative pundit, and is now a regular on GB News.
GBTWYCF feels at times like a futile attempt to force Nathan in particular, and maybe other Nathans watching at home, to see the world not through the eyes of Chloe but through those of Mathilda – a podcaster who has worked in refugee camps and is quickly dubbed a “woke champagne socialist”. The pair’s conversations about white privilege are almost as frustrating for him, you imagine, as they are for her (and god knows they definitely are for her). What they really need, I find myself thinking during another “but we didn’t cause all this” rant, is for someone outside the group to really break down the rot at the heart of much of British media and politics to them. But that would be a different, undoubtedly drier TV show, and not one where a man (Nathan again) talks about how he poos so much the plumbing in a Somali refugee camp surely won’t be able to handle his number twos.
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GBTWYCF is a a largely frustrating, frequently cringe-inducing endeavour, but there are moments in the first episode where I am fully on board with the whole thing, not least when Bushra tells Chloe she is a narcissistic sociopath. And, ultimately, some realisations do begin to be had – mostly by Dave, who sobs like a child when he sees the conditions that two young Syrian brothers are enduring, and sets about cooking a meal for their family. Whether those shouting about “illegals” will be equally moved is yet to be seen. But, you suspect – having already got their anger out online – most probably won’t be watching at all.
