Reggie Yates: Race Riots USA, BBC Three, Tuesday at 9pm
BBC Three has a problem with its reporting style and poor Reggie Yates didn’t seem clear what was expected from him.
The channel, which is aimed at a youth audience, tends to use young presenters who speak directly to camera telling viewers how they feel about certain situations.
The leading exponent is Stacey Dooley who specialises in a cri du cœur or two per episode.
Yates is a calmer, more watchable presenter, but you got the feeling that he was being encouraged by the producer to put more of himself on the film.
For the most part, this was a decent hour of television, with Yates giving us an insight into the tensions in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting dead by a police officer of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in 2014.
He spoke to disenfranchised young black men and also police recruits who had chosen to place themselves in the middle of a highly charged situation.
In fairness to Yates he reflected that being a police officer is an incredibly difficult job in a country where anyone could be holding a legal weapon.
One police trainer put it succinctly, when he said that the US was the only developed country in the world where a police officer stopping a car for a traffic violation had to have a plan for killing everyone in the vehicle if it became necessary.
The most significant contribution, however, came from a young lawyer who defended many of Ferguson’s majority African American community.
He explained how 70 per cent of the police force’s income is dependent on traffic fines and therefore confrontation by the majority black population and overwhelmingly white police force was almost inevitable.
And when these poor people turn up in court because they can’t pay the fines they find themselves facing a white judge, all white court officials and white police officers.
"The optics aren’t good" he said in an appropriate understatement.
The only pity was that BBC Three couldn’t adopt the same style.
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Dark Side of the Green, BBC 4, Wednesday at 9pm
Golf has had plenty of self-inflicted blows – its weird and sexist view of women, its elitism, its curmudgeonly attitude and its fashion.
But surely it doesn’t deserve the kicking Anthony Baxter sought to inflict.
Baxter’s confused film presented golf course development and its impact on communities and the environment as if it was ISIL riding into town.
Golf course developments have been used as stalking horses for housing projects and they use excessive amounts of water in dry countries but this doesn’t mean the game is intrinsically evil.
What is the sport to do if a middle-eastern prince made wealthy beyond our imagination by oil and gas exploration decides to build a golf course in the desert? He could irrigate it with champagne if he wanted to and there would be nothing we could do about it.
Baxter made his name with a previous film - ‘You’ve Been Trumped’ – which told the story of Donald Trump’s attitude to the neighbours at his Aberdeen golf development.
Trump is the ugly face of capitalism but it must be remembered that the overwhelming majority of golf courses in Ireland and Britain operate in a way Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters would be proud of.
They are owned by their members, hold the land in trust for future generations and operate not for profit, community owned facilities.
