Somewhere in the dank and festering corners of the TV guide are a group of fly-on-the-wall shows that trail the working lives of border agents. They’re the kind of thing you might switch to on those nights where defiance at going to bed like a sensible, functioning adult morphs into the belief that to truly live is to acquaint yourself with all of the shit and hilarious late-night TV you can lay your bloodshot little peepers on. “Eff society!” you might find yourself saying while wedged between two sofa cushions. “Habitual drug users and the long-term unemployed have got the right idea! To truly grasp the zeitgeist one must view life through the bleak lens of a reality TV camera!”
It’s a perfectly legitimate stance to take, but then the actuality of watching Border Security or UK Border Force or Immigration Smash Force: Terminal 2 sets in. A jobsworth built like a JCB rifles through the fragrant undergarments of a gap year student. Desperate migrant workers are booted back to where they came from after failing to satisfy the inquiries of a human clipboard. Suddenly, feeling very weary, you decide that maybe it is bedtime after all.
If you haven’t sampled the delights of such shows, do not fret. I mention them only because it’s from this well that new, part-improvised mockumentary Borderline (Tuesday, 10pm, Channel 5) draws inspiration. I can’t say an immigration mockumentary based on border fascism would be my first choice of casual viewing but, if you’ve got a better idea, let’s have it. A sitcom about patients of a children’s ward who exhibit worrying proclivities towards arson? A sketch show based in a foodbank with Ronni Ancona impersonating sobbing single mothers? Either of these might be on a par in the taste stakes with Borderline, a comedy set at border security in the fictional Northend Airport. Overseeing things is the boss figure Inspector Proctor who is, as such characters tend to be known in the business, as Brent as a nine-point memo. Under her charge are a hapless group of border agents who display varying levels of enthusiasm at being pawns for bleak isolationism. The fact that our ports and borders are a sly symptom of an increasingly draconian world shouldn’t stop it from being played for laughs, as the arrival of a tourist in a turban is here. Don’t tell me the dehumanising treatment of people with brown skin by stone-faced bullies is off limits now. It’s called comedy, joyless liberals, look it up yeah?
There are some who insist quite ferociously that it’s nice to be nice, so let’s look at the positives here. For instance, there’s border agent Tariq, a failed DJ and one of characters who succeeds in injecting genuine humour into his part with subtle timing and a good line in kill-me-now-I-hate-my-life facial expressions. I suppose the trouble with improvised comedy is that you’re only as sharp as the comic reflexes of your cast. On the one hand, you could get a talented actor like Jackie Clune, who plays Proctor with deadpan excellence. Or you could get a gurning chancer with a 1998 copy of the Urban Dictionary, hammily explaining why he’s come through border control with three grams of the devil’s dandruff in his record bag, and who Tariq has to process. “Well,” he says, as his more musically successful detainee waits for the police. “I’d rather be here than in jail; I never thought I’d say that.” To take the guttingly unfunny nuggets life deals you with such philosophical calm is an admirable thing.
