Television Review: A Life of Grime

THE RHETORIC of Nature as an uncontrollable force and human civilisation as a dike in need of a mighty big finger has become increasingly common as we roll towards the new millennium. In America, the "Earth changes" movement warns that Mother Nature is getting fed up with the way we, her naughty children, keep pulling her hair and refusing to eat our greens. Its adherents prophesy that when she finally loses her rag, there will be a cataclysm: the sea will drown whole cities; mankind's pitiful remnant (an enlightened few aside) will be mopped up by tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes; the Earth will be cleansed of humanity's defiling presence.

Over here, more modestly, we get A Life of Grime (BBC1). Ostensibly a documentary series about the work of Haringey Borough Council's environmental health department, this seems to be sprouting into a call to arms, a warning that nature is out to get us. The cameras follow a team of inspectors as they bustle around north London, shutting down a takeaway here, spraying a wasps' nest there; but all the time, nature is bursting through. The first episode, a fortnight ago, had cockroaches bursting out of the walls of a student house; last night's second programme began with a house where a corpse had lain undiscovered for two weeks in the summer heat leaving maggots writhing in pools of unnameable juice. In every corner, every minute, rubbish is accumulating, rats are scavenging, the rot is taking hold; life has begun to take on disturbing new forms.

The phenomenon was startlingly illustrated when Bosola - a name right out of Jacobean tragedy - finally bust the illegal goat-butchering ring she had been staking out: a van full of yellowed carcasses, jutting stumps of legs and necks piled high in the summer air. "Mutant," a passer-by kept repeating, like an alarm sounding.

In this war, Edmund Trebus is a fifth columnist. After decades of hoarding, Mr Trebus's imposing house and garden have become a labyrinth of consumer detritus; he eats, sleeps and performs his bodily functions in a few square feet among canyons of muck. A Polish war veteran, Mr Trebus is determined to resist any attempt to invade his territory, regardless of the danger to public health. Last night, the commentary tried to add a note of pathos to his story, revealing that his dog had died. I was too busy worrying about how, and indeed if, he had disposed of the body to spare any sympathy.

There was more inextinguishable life in Mystics (BBC2), a Modern Times film mainly concerned with messages from beyond the grave. David Hevey had gathered an eccentric cast of psychics and their clients to tell their stories of deaths foretold, and consolations and absolutions delivered from the other side. The material was fascinating, the film annoyingly stylised - kitsch choral interludes, lurid studio backgrounds, blunt metaphors (a woman's account of her mother's Christmastime suicide was accompanied by an image of a Christmas tree bauble breaking). Hevey let the psychics tell it straight and unchallenged, but the tricksy accompaniments suggested fun was being poked. This morning there must be some unhappy mediums.