The Man Who Fell From The Sky, Channel 4, Monday
There can be no more extreme example of people so desperate to escape poverty that they would hide in the wheel arch of a jumbo jet.
If you clamber up the wheel it’s possible to hide in the housing where the hydraulics sit, but it’s incredibly dangerous.
Documentary maker, Richard Bentley, found 109 recorded attempts, mostly on flights to London, and just 24 people survived. That’s a 78 per cent chance of death.
There’s a tiny ledge to lie on but it is exposed to extreme cold and lack of oxygen at the cruising height of an inter-continental flight.
And remember most people who are trying to enter rich countries are travelling long distances, with many hours hiding in these tiny spaces.
Many pass out from lack of oxygen and when the pilot drops the landing gear as the plane approaches the airport, the unseen and unconscious passenger falls to earth.
The affluent area of Richmond, on the flight path to Heathrow airport, has seen a number of these tragic deaths.
One such desperate case was Carlito Vale from Mozambique who smuggled himself into the wheel arch of a 737-400 on the ten-hour flight from Johannesburg to London, only to die in Richmond as the plane came into land.
That was in 2015 and the case attracted plenty of media attention. What few remember is that he had a partner who survived.
Themba Cabeka, from South Africa, remained inside the other wheel arch until the plane landed but then fell to the runway and was rushed to hospital. He has permanent injuries to a leg and a badly burnt hand which rested against the hot hydraulics when he fell unconscious, but he is alive.
Bentley spent years trying to find Themba, including a trip to Mozambique, and eventually met him in Liverpool where amazingly he was content with his lot and thankful for the generosity and welcome of Liverpudlians.
Finding Themba meant a unique explanation of why someone would attempt something so terrifying.
Themba said he met Carlito in a Johannesburg nightclub and they became best friends. Both were struggling.
“I was raised by my cousin, who adopted me as a child. Everything was normal until she passed away. I was going to school but I had to drop out because I couldn’t pay the fees,” said Themba.
Carlito had a wife and young daughter in Mozambique but also felt he wanted a new life in England so they hatched the fateful plan after studying aircraft engineering books.
The final ten minutes of the documentary, when we finally met Themba, were a revelation, but many viewers will not have made it through the long build up.
Three-quarters of the hour-long documentary were selfies of Bentley as he conducted research.
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Death To 2020, Netflix
Perhaps it was meant to be the ultimate parody. That the parody about the awful 2020 was worse than the actual year.
To be fair, there were a couple of giggles.
But these quips - “A year so momentous they named it twice,” “the lack of ventilators was breath-taking,” and “blowing the whistle while on a ventilator is a big ask” – were the best bits out of an 80-minute show.
Otherwise it was tired gags about predictable targets.
Even the celebrity quotient didn’t help, in a show written by Charlie Brooker (of Screenwipe) and Annabel Jones.
Lisa Kudrow was a Trump supporter denying the obvious, Hugh Grant was a racist English history professor, Tracey Ullman played the Queen and Samuel L Jackson was ostensibly a journalist but I suspect he was playing himself.
