Last night's TV: The Moorside (BBC1); Timeshift: Flights of Fancy - Pigeons and the British (BBC4)

A national nightmare that deserves to be remembered

Natalie Brown (Sian Brooke), Julie Bushby (Sheridan Smith), and Karen Matthews (Gemma Whelan) star in 'The Moorside' (BBC)

It was a brave thing indeed for the BBC to dramatise the story of Shannon Matthews, the little girl whose mum fabricated her kidnapping with a view to cashing in on reward money and publicity. Brave, that is, because it is still a traumatic case only partly mitigated by the relief that Shannon survived. Painful memories and legal risks involved in dramatising the story remain. Members of the Shannon family attacked the BBC for making The Moorland. It was, though, the right thing to do, and, at this distance, cannot be regarded as some sort of act of exploitation. It is a tale that bears sympathetic retelling, and this it has had. If newspapers that – predictably, and with their own agenda – criticise the BBC for making this drama can relive the saga, then so can the BBC revisit the story. (Shannon, by the way, is now 18, and lives with another family).

Almost a decade on, some of the details of the case are perhaps more dimly recalled than they ought to be (I speak for myself). No matter: the writing, direction and casting bring the whole miserable episode vividly back to life. Sheridan Smith plays Julie Bushby, a friend of Karen and community leader who organised to try and find Shannon during the 24 days she was missing. I have no idea whether Bushby and the people of the Moorside estate were as stolid, sentimental and determined as they’re portrayed to have been, but it was a mostly convincing depiction. (My faith in human nature cannot run to compete confidence, as the outcome of this cruel charade attests). Gemma Whelan is also well cast as Karen Matthews, a brittle and morally lost figure whose very banality makes her hard to comprehend as the p

erpetrator of such a galling, and hopeless, plan.

Part One of the two instalments concludes with the discovery of Shannon, alive and well, at the nearby home of an uncle of Karen’s current boyfriend. Part Two will, no doubt, trace the emotional scarring of scores of decent people as the full extent of Karen’s hoax is laid bare. I have to say that the most perplexing part of the whole bogus kidnapping is why anyone thought they’d be able to get away with it and that mystery may never never resolved.

There was a moment in Timeshift: Flights of Fancy – Pigeons and the British when I underwent an unexpected moment of communion with a young pigeon fancier who was trying to explain the attractions of this declining working class hobby. “We’ve all had birds that do weird things,” he reflected; I could certainly agree with that.

Otherwise, though, the archive footage and photographs dating from the nineteenth century to the 1970s, and contemporary testimony from the men (they are all men) who carry on the tradition, seemed very distant. It was like watching an anthropological expedition in the old Disappearing World series, or some nature documentary about a creature about to die out.

That said, the homing pigeon has had its day many a time, only to fly back to success with all the surety and resolve of, well, a homing pigeon. Indeed, technological change really hatched the whole pigeon thing. Having been used for carrying messages well into the 1800s, the birds became obsolete after the arrival of the telegraph.

Many thousands of the little things then found themselves unemployed. They found new work in providing harmless entertainment to working class men and boys who wanted a hobby to brighten their dreary, sooty, sweaty lives. Coal miners were especially fond of them, apparently. These aristocrats of the working classes were often paid a bit more than most labouring men, and could more easily afford the infrastructure of pigeon racing: building and maintaining a loft, birdseed, vets’ fees and the like. Homes in pit villages also had bigger gardens than houses in the cities. Maybe they even had to pay pigeon stud fees? Quite a comical thought. Then came the Great War, and the same cycle, Suddenly there was a huge demand for the birds because telephone lines were so vulnerable to shelling and, once again, a great glut of pigeons resulted when peace arrived. The interwar years were probably the high point in the reign of the pigeon.

So I learned a good deal, including the fact that it is illegal to bet on the outcome of pigeon races (though the Woodbine-smoking, pint-swilling lads of the North might, I suspect, have put a few shillings on the side on their favourites).

There were a few things missing, however. I am still not clear whether it was a carrier pigeon that helped form the basis of the Rothschild banking dynasty by delivering news of the result of the Battle of Waterloo first to Nathan Rothschild, who then had the opportunity to buy British government bonds at depressed prices before a victory rally boosted their values enormously. I’d also have appreciated a bit more on how the pigeon's remarkable internal “sat nav” actually works across such vast unfamiliar journeys. I felt that the programme could also have inserted a segment of the only song I am aware of devoted to the pigeon – ‘Pigeons in Flight’, the signature serenade of Sheffield singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth, who accompanied himself on the Hammond organ. In truth, John’s song isn’t about the pigeon so much as the eternal verities of romance, but it would have made a nice interlude all the same. Bernard Falk, a legendary TV reporter of the old school, made an appearance, but was unannounced and uncelebrated, which was as a bit of a shame for those of us old enough to recall Nationwide.

Anyway, it is very odd indeed to see grown men who spent an overtime shift hewing coal out of the earth cuddling and cooing over creatures which the postmodern world regards as “flying rats”: disease-ridden, disease-carrying guano machines that, in London at least, add to their general unattractiveness by hobbling around train stations, one foot seemingly eaten away by some sort of avian leprosy. Timewatch is a series that unfailingly delivers charm and fascination. The increasingly ubiquitous Mike Jupp (I hope there can be degrees of ubiquitousness, and that that is indeed a word) had just the right tone in his commentary. There was a sense of sadness in seeing how communities lose traditions as well as jobs when they go into decline. I am, though, still bemused by the idea of anyone fancying a pigeon. Weird.