Darren McGarvey: The State We're In

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What are the chances? A BBC documentary on the justice system calls for longer sentences, tougher jail conditions and more emphasis on the victims of crime.

I'll tell you the chances — none whatsoever. Instead, The State We're In (BBC2) sent rapper and Left-wing author Darren McGarvey to look at policing and the prison service.

The solutions he offered to Britain's spiralling crime problems were so pathetically predictable, I had to check this wasn't a satire — boxing gyms to keep young men out of trouble, and recording studios where prisoners can express their creativity. Oh, and more university degrees for convicts, because inside every toerag there's a doctor of philosophy struggling to shine.

McGarvey's dislike for every aspect of law and order was blatant from the outset. 'Trust in the police is at an all-time low,' he jeered. 'I'd really like to know what possesses new recruits to join the service.'

He didn't say 'what inspires' them or 'what decides' them. It was 'what possesses' them, as though any police trainee must have taken leave of their sanity and abandoned their moral compass.

The State We're In (BBC2) sent rapper and Left-wing author Darren McGarvey (pictured, left) to look at policing and the prison service

Like all rappers, he trades on his rebellious past. Exactly what his previous run-ins with the law have been he didn't say, but as he climbed into the back of a patrol car, he boasted, 'This is a bit of a flashback for me.'

And having grown up on a council estate in Glasgow, he made sure on a visit to the city's Barlinnie jail that we realised he had a friend behind bars there. 'How ya doin' wee man?' he yelled up at one of the windows.

He did meet the mother of a 12-year-old girl murdered by a teenager with a knife, in Liverpool. The killer will be eligible for release by the time he is 28. 'It should be a life for a life,' pleaded the anguished woman. 'He took my child away.'

McGarvey certainly wasn't going to discuss capital punishment. He acted as though he hadn't even heard her. His solution was that we 'have to understand the root causes of certain behaviours, including violence' — and the way to do that was to channel male aggression into sports such as boxing.

Before visiting a jail in Norway where the cells resemble budget hotel rooms, he taunted viewers: 'I feel like I'm going to have to give a trigger warning to hundreds of thousands of rural conservatives who have never had any dealings with the police or the criminal justice system. What you're about to see is going to be very, very upsetting.'

The jail's mock supermarket wasn't upsetting, just bizarre — a place for shoplifters to hone their skills. What was truly distressing, though, was McGarvey's turn in the prison studio, revealing his embarrassing lack of talent as a rapper. If he charges people to go to his gigs, that's criminal.

Things You Should Have Done 

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The first two episodes of the Generation Z sitcom Things You Should Have Done (BBC3) yielded no rapping but a very funny lip-synched version of a Billy Ray Cyrus country hit, performed by two ghosts.

This mischievous slice of cringe-comedy stars Lucia Keskin as Chi, a bone-idle woman of 21 who can barely feed herself, let alone get a job, and sponges off her parents — until they're killed in a car crash.

Chi inherits their house (to the fury of spiteful Auntie Karen, played by the brilliant Selin Hizli) and a bucket list of things to do: learn to tell the time, do the washing up, show some sort of compassion for another human being.

If you loved This Country, these Things are well worth discovering.