Last night's TV review: Neighbourhood Nightmares gives us a lurid peek into the miseries of others

Another slice of next-door war, as if we haven’t had enough of it already

(ITV)

Neighbourhood Nightmares (ITV)
People Just Do Nothing (BBC3)

Neighbourhood Nightmares is not to be confused with The Nightmare Neighbour Next Door, When Neighbours Spy, When Neighbours Attack, Neighbours From Hell, Extreme Nightmare Neighbours, Love They Neighbour (1970s racist comedy – not as nice as it sounds) or the popular feel-good Aussie soap Neighbours.

Well, here’s a world where neighbours are there for one another, but in all the worst ways. Like its televisual kith and kin, Neighbourhood Nightmares subsists very well on the interstices of inhuman interaction given as dowry by the arrival of cheap digital CCTV systems and smartphones, and explores – admittedly not for the first time – nightmare neighbours. We may be sure there is more video where this lot came from, and if you can’t wait for the chaps at ITV or Channel 5 to come up with another compilation, you can of course always try YouTube for (very) raw material.

For those keener on a curated experience, this particular ITV series (this was the first episode of four) had some entertaining neighbourly feuds, as they always are if you’re not the poor sod who can’t get a night’s sleep or who has had their home rendered unsellable by the acts of some anti-social scumbags. Like Lambeth Council who, apparently, wilfully and literally bulldozed their way through their own planning rules and built an astonishingly ugly block of flats at the back of the gardens of the residents of Wyatt Park Road, south London – in my experience a typical act of municipal arrogance enacted in the name of affordable housing, whatever that is. Thus were they robbed of their light and privacy, and the courts, according to this account, have not been helpful to them. A dispiriting story.

Another row was described as “the most notorious in the country”, but I am sure there have been worse. This involved a chap named Wayne and his fellow occupants of a cul-de-sac in Devon. Wayne seemed to be one of those people who has decided that Britain is a “common-law domain”, deftly disposing of 800 years of Parliamentary activity, and that that bestows upon him as a freeman certain inalienable rights, granted by King John, and freedoms that Devon and Cornwall police and the Exeter Crown Court, among others, cannot deprive him of. He claimed his neighbours were racist because of their attitude to his Filipino wife; they claimed he was filming them all the time. I have no idea who was right, even on the basis of extensive first-hand footage and testimony from both sides, but what is beyond doubt is that when he turned up at court he threatened the judge with a million-pound fine and then walked out. So the day didn’t go well for Wayne. In due course he was given a fine of £100, which had a fine symbolic effect.

The curious thing is that while Wayne's neighbours regarded his constant filming of them as maniacal and intrusive, here we all were, in our millions, watching the images on ITV prime time. And yet there is something ingloriously seductive about witnessing the miseries of others. We might as well admit it; if we didn’t, then these sorts of shows would never get made and YouTube would go out of business.

There were other diabolical neighbours too, but more of a cheat really; wild boars are not strictly speaking residents of anywhere much, a little like the random collection of motley plane spotters making life more difficult than it needs be for people who happen to live near Heathrow (they block driveways and drop litter). Then there’s the stinking slaughterhouse in Northumbria that keeps its neighbours up with the eerie sounds of the night shift’s slaughter of the lambs. Only at dawn comes the silence. Isn’t that right, Clarice?

I am cheating somewhat here, but I feel I have to take whatever opportunity I can to urge you too to become addicted to People Just Do Nothing. It is midway through its third series and it is a very worthy successor to The Office as a quality, acutely observed and brilliantly executed mockumentary – not surprising, given both were produced by Ash Atalla. Here we have a bunch of deluded idiots from Hounslow into garage music, weed and their pirate radio station Kurupt FM. From these elements has been fashioned the funniest new comedy of the decade: the accomplishment is a joy to behold.

Because it's on BBC3 (online only), it doesn’t have a conventional transmission time as such, and so it doesn’t, in a way, feel like proper telly, but it is properly funny, and you can catch all three series at your leisure via the BBC iPlayer.

My favourite character is their “manager” Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry), who styles himself “the Brown Casanova”, and still has 560 spare boxes of his signature “Peanut Dust” snacks, if you’re interested in becoming a potential business partner. His ambition it is to breed with a Polish “chick” and create “Ukip’s worst nightmare” – loads of beige coloured “Poli-stani” kids running about the place. I’d love to have him for a neighbour.