WHO SHOULD WE LET IN? IAN HISLOP ON THE FIRST GREAT IMMIGRATION ROW, BBC2, 9pm
IMMIGRATION is always such a dangerous, hot-tempered topic, so let’s relax for a moment and put it in the safe hands of cheery, good-natured and dizzyingly intelligent Ian Hislop.
He doesn’t go over the well-worn and furiously muddy ground of the Calais Jungle and EU freedom of movement, but instead looks at the Victorian era.
Back then, in an age when Britain was astonishingly wealthy and confident, there was no pathetic bleating that the nation’s identity would be lost if we let people in to pick fruit and look after our old folk.
However, as the 19th century closed, people were beginning to grumble about “bloody foreigners” and Hislop traces the changing attitudes and legislation.
Although he is relaxed and generous and approaches this with an open mind, he interviews some with drastically different points of view, such as the infamous Katie Hopkins.
KILLER WOMEN WITH PIERS MORGAN, STV, 9pm
REBECCA Fenton doesn’t look like a murderer serving a life sentence. She has long frizzy hair, a stern expression and watches Piers Morgan keenly through her spectacles.
She looks more like a librarian with a drink problem than a frenzied killer, which seems to perplex her interviewer, too. Is she a murderer and a liar, or has she suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice? “I’ll be honest with you,” Morgan tells her. “I don’t know which one it is.”
In 2008, Fenton says, she came home to find her husband’s dead body. “This cannot be happening!” she cried on the 911 call. Six years later she was arrested for his murder.
Morgan visits her in her Florida jail as she plans an appeal, and discusses the case in some very blunt interviews.
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