Hunting the Paedophiles: Inside the National Crime Agency - Channel 4: TV review

This highlighted an important topic, but one that wasn’t suited to this documentary format

Hunting the Paedophiles: Inside the National Crime Agency (Channel 4)

All this crime on TV’s not very festive, is it? I suppose Channel 4’s trying to get sleaze wrapped up before the reruns of Elf start, but would it be too much to ask for something cheerier? Last week we had the brilliant but grim The Murder Detectives, following a fatal stabbing step by step from 999 call to conviction. That was filmed as it happened, a risky business for a production company. This documentary was on safer, but no less dark, ground. It re-told 2013’s successful Operation Perdition, run by Ceop – the NCA’s unit dedicated to fighting online sexual abuse of children- and an investigation that resulted in the unravelling of a Bahrain-based paedophile ring, who groomed and blackmailed British children to get them to perform sex acts on camera.

Understandably, reconstructions were limited in their scope. We had to rely on shadowy scenes and crime-scene shots of the victims’ dismantled computers. The exchanges between the offenders and British school children were shocking in their simple awfulness, conveyed via on-screen messages. And the officers we heard from weren’t TV personalities, or trying to be, but their dedication and compassion was impressive. One day I hope editors will realise that some subject matters don’t need distracting, dramatic scores, though.

Most interesting were the bits in Bahrain. It was heartening to see the cooperation between the forces. “It was an eye-opener for everyone,” said the Bahraini officer. This documentary was too, and it’s an important subject and a growing concern. Sadly in this format, it didn’t make the best television