Dirty Business is a new three-part dramatisation that brings to light what we’ve all known for a long time, in that we all know that since privatisation, water companies have been dumping human shit in the rivers for many years, and that all the governments of the day allowed it.
Stumbling across the facts and piecing it all together are retired detective Ash Smith (David Thewlis – Avatar: Fire And Ash) and Oxford professor (and jazz fan) Peter Hammond (Jason Watkins – The Phoenician Scheme), taking in real-life situations from 2017, where treatment tanks either flooded or full, causing the machines to fail, meaning staff on-site have no other option but to dump the shit straight into the river, regardless of however much is allowed.
And then flashback to 1999, where a family simply swimming in the sea causes the daughter to bleed from somewhere she shouldn’t, before going to hope for the best in hospital. Plus, even in the ‘present day’ (2017 onwards) when the two leads continue their investigations, when one of them pricks their finger and gets an infection… eww!!
But one person championing the cause in the outside world is Feargal Sharkey, the No.1 pop star from 40+ years ago, telling us what gets depicted here, where water companies are allowed to monitor themselves without interference from government agencies, and if they commit any crimes, THEN to report them, aka “wastewater self-monitoring”. So, the easiest way to cover anything up.
Plus, DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) is supposed to visit treatment works no longer than a period of 6 months between visits, but it’s been many years since they last vistied Thames Water, for example.
Oh, and they claim that the brown in the water isn’t down to effluent. Yep, we all know what their excuses smell of…
There’s plenty of other excuses to be featured in Dirty Business – including comment from whistleblowers, here shown as Michael Lazarus (Asim Chaudhry – Black Mirror), and it’s essential viewing, almost feeling like it does for the sewage horrors, what Threads did for nuclear war. That one was also a dramatisation, but about what might happen, whereas this series is all about what HAS happened, but you get the idea.
Thanks to our friends at Channel 4 for the screener prior to release.
Patience continues tomorrow night on Channel 4 at 9pm, and runs both nights for four weeks in total, and after broadcast will be on All 4.
It’s not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but when it is, it will be listed on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time:50 minutes per episode (3 episodes)
Release date: February 23rd 2026
Channel: Channel 4
Format: 2.39:1
Director: Joseph Bullman
Producers: Laura McCutcheon, Meeshan Saxena
Writer: Joseph Bullman
Music: Sarah Playford
Cast:
Ash Smith: David Thewlis
Peter Hammond: Jason Watkins
Julie Preen: Posy Sterling
Mark Preen: Tom McKay
Sir James Bevan: Alex Jennings
Michael Lazarus: Asim Chaudhry
Susan Davy: Alice Lowe
Hanna Swift: Chanel Cresswell
Lucy Hunt: Vicki Pepperdine
Sophie Harrison: Charlotte Richie
Debbie Henderson: Juliet Cowan
Chris Hines: Tom Durant-Pritchard
John Bull: Craig Parkinson
Alex Sinclair: Stephen Wight
Richard Aylard: Andrew Havill
Alan Wrigley MP: Jon Culshaw
Julia Simpson: Sarah Durham
Reuben Santer: Mike Noble
Hannah Rodger: Stephanie Hyam
Laura Monbiot MP: Georgie Henley
Lizzie Millhouse: Ellie White
Martin Samuels: Shubham Saraf
Guy Kingsnorth: Tom Walker
Charles Hale-Barlow: Anthony Calf
Poppi Humphries: Lucia Keskin
Djaleh Alizadeh: Nicole Ansari-Cox
Lennie Lauchlin: Naomi Bacttrick
Dr Ismail Akhtar: Gavi Singh Chera
Ottilie Fitzwilliam: Alice Orr-Ewing
Sarah Harrison: Elizabeth Berrington
Crime Officer: Sunil Patel
David Marwood: Mark Arends
Clare Hamlyn: Leonora Barton
Simon Smith: Joey Bloomfield
Baby Sophie Smith: Thea Rose Bloomfield
Environment Agency Rep: Ian Bonar
Dr Natalie Hodgekiss: Alice Bounsall
Eloise Greenwood MP: Emma Boydell
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.