paul2001sw-1

When neonatal deaths at a hospital in Chester started to rise, and investigation followed which eventually fingered Nurse Lucy Letby as a mass murderer. She is appealing the verdict, and although this documentary has clearly been made with the assistance of her (new) defence team, it's solidly put together and some serious questions are raised. A list shown to the jury, showing Letby present at every suspicious event, had in fact been filteted for those events she was present at; seemingly incriminating notes were only made after she had been accused; and the decision to send increasingly vulnerable babies to a unit ill-equipped to deal with them provides a natural explanation for their unfortunate deaths. It's also very strange that Letby's original defence team queried none of the medical evidence presented by the prosecution. I know there are some people who do terrible things, but the absence of obvious motive makes the story of guilt feel suspicious. Has she been convicted because we're just too keen to believe stories about monsters?

Most series about human civilisation skip lightly over pre-history in a single epidsode. There is something welcome, therefore, about a programme that concentrates on the story of the earliest humans. Unfortunately, 'Human' just isn't very good. The visuals are spectacular, but that's because it shows us sand dunes and glaciers when talking about how humans once lived in hostile environments, rather than the less extreme places they actually lived. Much of the commentary has a vauge "feel the wonder" vibe as opposed to the more educational content of someone like Jacob Boronwoski. Most annoyingly, presenter Ella ah-Shamahi talks endless about our relatioship with "other species of human", without once defining what she means by the terms "human" and "species". She is thus particuarly unelightening when discussing interbreeding. Ultimately, what we get here is a lot of pretty pictures; but not much to truly enlighten us.

You watch a documentary about a cult and its almost inevitable that, among all sorts of other abuses, the story will end up with sexual abuse. Such is that case of the 'Jesus Army'; but the sobering thing here is that this isn't a story that occurred in a wild and semi-lawless place, a long time ago, but in densely populated suburban England within the last few decades. Perhaps the price for living in a "free" society is that those who would control others have a certain ability to do so (otherwise, the state has a mononpoly on that!) - but it's a high price. It would seem that the human desire to belong makes us very vulnerable to those who would take advantage.