Small Town, Big Riot, BBC Three review: investigative journalism for the Instagram generation
The recent spate of riots were sparked by resentment over the presence of asylum seekers and fuelled by social media. Some of the people protesting had genuine grievances. Some were racist. Some were just bored and fancied a bit of action. This is all obvious. But in Small Town, Big Riot these conclusions were presented as revelatory.
This is BBC investigative journalism at its most pitiful. It is made in the style of most BBC Three documentaries, which is to say that most of the screen time is taken up by the presenter – in this case Mobeen Azhar – being filmed driving a car or hanging up shirts in a hotel room. These are the boring bits of reporting that proper documentaries wouldn’t consider worthy of broadcast.
We start with Azhar ringing someone, and telling viewers: “I reckon if there’s ever a time for him to actually talk, it’s probably now, given everything that’s happened.” On tenterhooks to find out who he’s calling, and what they’re going to say, instead it goes to voicemail and that’s the end of that.
It doesn’t improve much. Azhar’s investigation was at least timely – the riot that had caught his interest took place last year in Kirkby, Merseyside, outside a hotel housing asylum seekers. It provided a “blueprint”, he suggested, for the trouble that broke out this summer. In Kirkby, the catalyst was a video of a 15-year-old girl being propositioned by a 25-year-old man who had been staying at the hotel.
Azhar spoke to Bekah Smith, a wannabe TikTok influencer who had made several posts about the riot. She took him to a shopping arcade where a man yelled in his direction about paedophiles. This was uncomfortable for Azhar, because his parents came to the UK from Pakistan and he rightly felt affronted that grooming scandals have led people to associate all Pakistani men with sex crimes.
But this is supposed to be a documentary about the riots, not about the presenter’s feelings. Perhaps Azhar had to fill time, because elsewhere he was filmed going to the hotel (there were no asylum seekers there any more), going to court (cameras are not allowed in), and going to see the mother of the 15-year-old in the video (she didn’t allow him to film her). There were also some pointless interviews with a couple of Far Right figures, which added nothing. Perhaps this confessional, me-me-me TV is just what we get now in the age of Instagram.
Small Town, Big Riot is available now on BBC iPlayer and will be on BBC Three at 9pm on Monday 23 September