Stacey Meets The IS Brides, BBC1, Monday at 8.30pm
I imagine it doesn’t happen to Stacey Dooley too often, but this Panorama special consisted mostly of people saying no to her.
The celebrity journalist was on her first Panorama assignment and was sent off to interview the foreign wives of Islamic State fighters stuck in Kurdish camps in Syria.
Islamic State’s dream of a caliphate in Syria and Iraq had been crushed at the beginning of the year and these women, drawn to the conflict from around the world, were left stateless.
Most of their countries of origin don’t want them back and the Kurds don’t know what to do with them. They sit in dusty camps with their children, unclear what the future holds for them.
There was no mention of their husbands who presumably have been killed or are being held in separate camps where the television cameras don’t go.
The most famous of these women is Shamima Begum. She left the UK as a 15-year-old in 2015, memorably captured on CCTV as she left, and re-emerged in one of these camps in February when she was tracked down by a London Times journalist.
Her appeal to return home with her child resulted in a public debate about the rights, if any, of returning jihadists.
Begun, who was stripped of her British citizenship, no longer talks to film crews so Dooley was left wandering around two desolate camps asking if anyone spoke English and was willing to be interviewed.
She got increasingly vexed at the lack of someone willing to apologise for IS’s actions and eventually ended up in a bit of a shouting match with a group of women through a security fence.
Dooley, who won the 2018 series of Strictly Come Dancing, heard a British accent from a group of women in a fenced off compound and she asked them what they think they deserve after joining IS.
“Why do you speak about what we deserve?” came the reply from the huddle of entirely blacked out women.
“Well, I didn’t turn my back on democracy,” Dooley retorts.
“Who turned their back on democracy?,” asked the woman.
Dooley shot back: “You did, you knew what ISIS stood for, ISIS slaughtered civilians, ISIS slaughtered aid workers who come to help civilians.”
“Why are we getting blamed for things we haven’t done? We haven’t committed any beheadings or nothing like that,” said the woman.
And it continued: “I’m asking you, woman to woman if you think it’s OK to slaughter civilians?”
“Of course not, we don’t believe in slaughtering civilians.''
Dooley: “But that is what ISIS stands for.”
Guess that was another no to an interview then.
*****
Jade: The Reality Star Who Changed Britain, Channel 4, Wednesday at 9pm
We didn’t get to the bit about how Jade Goody changed Britain but this biography did remind us of the horrible tabloid treatment she initially suffered.
Presumably this three part series on the life of the reality star will argue she changed the country through the attention she brought to cervical cancer, but episode one focused on her time in the Big Brother house.
We may think that social media is a horrible place now, but the red top tabloids were vicious to Goody in 2002, calling her a ‘pig’ and a ‘monster from the deep’. This kind of language is unthinkable now.
Of course things changed when they realised how popular she was and soon large sums were being paid to Goody by the same tabloids and celebrity magazines.
That aside, there was little in this first episode to make you think two more hours are necessary.
