The Romanians Are Coming, Channel 4 - TV review: Playing the system? English-speaking Alex is cleaning our streets while sleeping rough

We got to know three men and their stories variously confirmed and confounded the stereotypes

Ellen E. Jones
Wednesday 18 February 2015 00:00 GMT
Comments
Hard times: Alex featured in 'The Romanians Are Coming'
Hard times: Alex featured in 'The Romanians Are Coming'

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

You've seen a few documentaries about immigration before but you've never seen one quite like Channel 4's new three-parter. That's because The Romanians Are Coming is completely from the point of view of the immigrants themselves, and its unapologetic approach to this well-rehearsed debate is rather refreshing.

Our narrator was proud Romanian Gypsy Alex Fechete Petru, but we didn't hear much about him in this first episode – he promised that his story will come next week. Instead, Alex told us about the 20,000 other Romanians who arrived in the UK last year, most of whom contribute to the economy. "But I don't want to lie to you, there are some Romanians that come with no jobs and nowhere to live. And it's Gypsies like these that scare the shit out of you."

We got to know three such men and their stories variously confirmed and confounded the stereotypes. Alex (not the narrator, a different Alex) is a Romanian national who moved here via Canada where he'd spent several years. He spoke perfect English with a Canadian accent and was currently working as a street cleaner, while sleeping rough in a car park near Victoria station.

Things were even worse for Sandu, a father of nine who arrived from one of the poorest parts of Romania in search of work, accompanied by his eldest son "Their English is so bad they wouldn't understand even if they were offered a job," observed the narrator, and in one particularly piteous scene that proved true.

It was Stefan, however, who seemed to most closely resemble the bogeyman of Ukip's nightmares. As soon as his benefit money came in, he sent the majority of it home to his family and then took himself off to an NHS dentist to get his teeth fixed. When Alex asked Stefan where he supposed the money came from, he hazarded a guess: "The EU?"

Stefan doesn't understand how the NHS works, because they don't have one in Romania. The more we discovered about his home situation, the botched operation that had left his young daughter unable to walk, the more he seemed like a father doing what any other father would, given the same set of desperate circumstance.

In any case, as Alex's narration pointed out, Stefan is in the minority. Less than two and a half thousand Romanians are on benefits in this country. Hopefully, The Romanians Are Coming will also include some more representative stories.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in