Murdoch

In The Print is a docudrama about the bitter war between Rupert Murdoch and the unions in the mid-1980s. Murdoch was determined to computerise the production of his UK titles and to terminate the far left’s stranglehold on his business. Daily papers are vulnerable to last-minute strikes and his thieving employees made no secret of their larcenous tactics. The print workers, known as ‘inkies’, earned £1,000 a week for 16 hours’ work and their union, Sogat, behaved like a bunch of racketeers. They laughed at Murdoch by submitting wage claims for employees called ‘Donald Duck’ and ‘Ronald Reagan’. Murdoch fought back with smart, imaginative tactics that Sogat, under Brenda Dean’s

‘The world is hell, and men are both the tormented souls and the devils within it.’ This was the cheery epigraph from Schopenhauer with which The North Water introduced itself — aptly, as it transpired. Certainly, BBC2’s starry new Victorian drama is not for those who prefer their television characters to be loveable. The first person we met was Irishman Henry Drax (Colin Farrell), who gruntingly concluded his business with a Hull prostitute before heading for the docks in a way familiar to viewers of Victorian TV dramas: shamble up the cobbles, straight on past the women in shawls, turn left at the urchins. Following a restorative dose of rum,