A Chinese takeaway run by a whole family in debt to the people-smugglers... A Ugandan bringing in a bag of grasshoppers, possibly not realising it was a health-hazard... A Californian illegal claiming that three days isn't long enough to pack her kit and get on the plane home... this is the standard fare of those, like myself, who enjoy UK Border Force, mainly as a nice rest for the brain.
It is the case of the Antiguan overstayer that we find rather more intriguing. He puts on a good theatrical impression of innocence, but his interviewer Alison isn't buying it, armed with Home Office proof to the contrary. Alison is the surprise package, a fellow West Indian, tall and giggly, dreadlocks flying everywhere, and a rap-artist accent. Might she be under pressure to side with another of her breed? It seems not, as we view her own equally theatrical impression of weighing-up the chances of his re-offending. But there's a giveaway sign when she decides to refer the case upwards, telling him "I want you to be on your best behaviour."
Her boss, Chief Dyson, looks and sounds the very opposite of Alison - the sceptical white cop with the no-nonsense moustache, who's going to need a lot of convincing. Yet he is soon swung round in favour, on the most puzzling pretext of all - because the suspect is very charming! Ye Gods, so are half the criminals on earth. And here we see a dangerous process at work: the interviewee slowly becoming the interviewer (a trick that Jimmy Savile pulled-off expertly when the cops were starting to look closer).
The episode starts with a depressing statistic: 25,000 people work for the Border Agency. And as the rubber dinghies pile up on Dover beach, we wonder, not for the first time, whether they're fit for purpose.