Adam Curtis offers up another startling deep dive into recent British history – and the new show from the creator of Dawson’s Creek is like Succession … for a fishing dynasty
The first people we see in Adam Curtis’s latest documentary series are Jimmy Savile and Margaret Thatcher. It’s hard to think of a more fitting pair to embody the disappointments of Britain in the late 20th century. Curtis’s signature style – a mix of archive deep dives and uncanny juxtapositions – still startles. Loss is the theme of Shifty: it’s a story of Britain losing industry, community and empire, and struggling to come to terms with the individualistic complexity that replaced these certainties. It takes a while for the narrative to sharpen, but Curtis’s films are often best understood as impressionistic art installations so maybe abstraction is their natural final destination.
BBC iPlayer, from Saturday 14 June
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