TV Preview, Soft Border Patrol (BBC2 Northern Ireland, BBC iPlayer, Friday 10.35pm): Brexit break-up comedy

Making a mockery of real life – from the Irish border to local councils and the Cotswolds

He does his best work while confused: soft border patroller Sandy (BBC Northern Ireland)

One of the great joys of the BBC iPlayer is that it liberates a great deal of material it was impossible to access in pre-digital times. Political junkies, for example, can, if they want, spend much of their Sunday catching the dozen or so BBC regional reports from the Sunday Politics show. That way you can stay alert to developments in the Welsh Assembly, say, or in Northern Ireland.

A slightly less arid way of keeping up with events in Northern Ireland is the new mockumentary Soft Border Patrol, broadcast, in conventional terms, only in Ireland but, as I say, now freely available sans frontieres across the British Isles on iPlayer. As the name suggests, it is set in the very near future of a post-Brexit island of Ireland, where Brussels, Stormont, Dublin and Westminster have jointly agreed to set up a formal soft border and therefore need a soft border patrol to administer it. Kitted out in their neutral cherry burgundy uniforms and baseball caps, their motto is: “We patrol the border, but we’re here to let you through.” Which could work, actually.

You’ll enjoy the jokes about the patrol teams “sharing power”, the even-handed mockery of the DUP’s Arlene Foster (and her smoke alarm) and Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill (and her hair straighteners), and some near-the-bone gags about IRA men and a group who want to reunify Ulster. That, by the way, means uniting the existing six counties of Northern Ireland with the other three counties of historic Ulster, which now lie in the Republic of Ireland (can you name them? The “Continuity Nine County Sovereignty Committee” couldn’t). The CNCSC want to achieve their goal by using “violently peaceful” means, and have the ambition of joining up in some political federation with the West Indies.

It is very fun and – in a land where a plank across a stream constitutes an illegal crossing on a hotly contested international boundary, and Calgel, syrup and fish are contraband – a very necessary mirror to some of the absurdities that Brexit has visited upon us all. Made by the Glasgow-based Comedy Unit, it has a fine ensemble cast, of which the standout must be the rural patrol, bicycling dolt Sandy (Alan Irwin), whose task is to monitor the border ‘as the crow flies’, although as Sandy reflects: “A crow wouldn’t fly that wonky.”

Soft Border Patrol, then, is another of the BBC’s fine recent crop of comedy mockumentaries, such as People Just Do Nothing and, back for its second run on BBC3 and BBC1, This Country. This week Kerry Mucklowe, the magnificent comic creation of Daisy Cooper, has been receiving sexually explicit, though oddly unerotic, letters. This she finds especially worrying because it means “they probably know where I live”. Big Mandy (Ashley McGuire) offers her nunchucks skills, and background in stalking, to protect Kerry, who seems not as hard as she’d like to think she is.

Daisy and Charlie Cooper star as the Mucklowe cousins in ‘This Country’ (BBC)

It’s your chance to celebrate a better yesterday with Sir Bruce: a Celebration, which, well, is a celebration of the life and works of Sir Bruce Forsyth. I don’t want to be uncharitable, especially about someone who achieved more than most of us could ever dream about creatively, but I was never that knocked down by his talents. Anyway, there’s plenty who disagree with me, and for them there is this one hour Brucie-fest, hosted by another showbiz legend, Dame Shirley Bassey.

Nat (Isy Suttie), admin assistant and radical in ‘Damned’ (Channel 4)

Damned, an unlikely sort of sitcom set in the social services department of a hard-pressed local council (aren’t they all), tries to smack some humour out of heroin abuse this week. Fortunately the combined and formidable talents of Jo Brand, Isy Suttie, Kevin Eldon and the rest of the excellent team make it work.

By the way, The Archiveologists is the latest little gem from the comedy genius that is Diane Morgan, who you may know better as the spoof faux naif personality Philomena Cunk. Co-written with Joe Wilkinson, they take those slightly staid public information-type films from the 1960s and 1970s and re-voice them with foul-mouthed, sexually audacious and unhinged commentaries. So they’re very funny – espresso shots for your jaded palate.

Catherine Tate gets pupdates in ‘Saving the British Bulldog’ (BBC)

Cocking a leg against the culture of the pedigree dog during Crufts week, Catherine Tate sets out to expose the horrors inflicted on the poor old British bulldog. She talks to vets, breeders, fans and the Kennel Club to try to discover what possible justification there is for creating such an unnatural look, so far removed from its athletic origins they have difficulty breathing and walking. Saving the British Bulldog isn’t, but should be, one of a series devoted to the excesses of our doggie culture, with due attention given to the Cavalier King Charles spaniel, husky, shih tzu and many others who have suffered illness bred into them. The current fad for “designer dog” hybrids, such as labradoodles, is the only good news around the world of posh mutts right now.

It’s now more than six decades since they hanged Ruth Ellis, the model and hostess who killed her lover in cold blood, and her story has lost none of its fascination. She was, famously, the last woman to suffer the death penalty in Britain, and her crime, and the penalty she paid for it, divided opinion then and now. Today, although the four shots she fired at David Blakely were plainly premeditated, she might have had more chance of staying alive herself with a defence of provocation and cruelty on his part. This three part revisiting of the case, about which countless books and a memorable film have been devoted to, includes a chilling tape recording of pillow talk between Ellis and another lover, Desmond Cussen. The more you learn about her, the sorrier you feel for Ellis.

Finally, Room 101 returns on Friday, and Una Stubbs, magnificent at 80 years of age, joins Frank Skinner to dispatch some more objects of hate. Some of us would like to do the same with Skinner.

This Country (BBC iPlayer); Sir Bruce: A Celebration (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Damned (Channel 4, Wednesday 10pm); The Archiveologists (BBC2, Tuesday 10.25pm); Saving the British Bulldog (BBC1, Wednesday 9pm); The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story (BBC4, Tuesday 9pm); Room 101 (BBC1, Friday 8.30pm)

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