Grenfell Uncovered: Netflix should be commended for such sober, vital journalism

Telegraph

a day ago

The only fault in Grenfell Uncovered, Netflix's feature-length documentary about the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster, is that it doesn't uncover that much.
Although director Olaide Sadiq has worked meticulously through the litany of failures that led to the fire that killed 72 people – and although it is absolutely worth reiterating how the warnings were ignored, how private companies put profit before public safety and how the then-government put a crazed disdain for what it called 'red tape' ahead of its citizens' protection – all of this was covered off in gruesome, shocking detail in the Grenfell Inquiry's 1,700-page final report. This was published in September last year and was widely summarised and reported.
Still, in an era of global streamers with disparate, global audiences, part of the challenge for documentary-makers is second guessing what their viewers will know already. In this, Grenfell Uncovered has gone for the only available option, which is the full, grim picture. It is not, it hardly needs saying, an easy watch.
In many ways, the documentary's trump card is its editing. That sounds very boring, but for the viewer it means a linear narrative, starting from the first 999 call, that then spread its tentacles down timelines of personal stories and historic corporate malfeasance. The dexterous splicing means that in spite of all this context, the film retains an agonising momentum.
As portrayed here, Arconic, Celotex and all the other stupidly named multinationals got busy with their 'systematic dishonesty' years ago while in the foreground Grenfell burned. Personal testimony from the families who lost love ones is contrasted with staggering bureaucratic indifference and what the inquiry called 'a merry-go-round of buck-passing'. It'll make you angry, which is precisely what this kind of sober, important journalism should do.
This, as you'll have gathered, is an excellent documentary, and credit should be given to Netflix for commissioning it. It is well known in telly circles that these are dire times for documentary film-makers. Big streamers, the line goes, want to steer clear of politics, instead opting for big, user-friendly series, ideally involving gruesome historical crimes about which we can speculate to our hearts' content.
Grenfell Uncovered is not that. Not only is it a one-off film, foregoing the subscription catnip of a series for a more powerful one-shot format, but it also goes for the jugular.
The Cameron government that loosened regulations are lambasted, along with Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the London Fire Brigade and every individual who could be proved to have shirked their responsibilities. The then-prime minister Theresa May even appears in an interview in which she addresses both her actions and, more importantly, her inactions.
Like much of the film, this is not quite the coup it has been presented as – May has said she regrets her response (not going to meet survivors of the blaze when she first visited the site) before. But her inertia was presented in the film as part of a more general theme – of powerful people and corporations having the chance to take action, and choosing not to. Carelessness, yet again, costs lives.