A New Kind of Match

Current affairs programme about the Pakistani community in Bradford and the discrimination they face

This hard-hitting TV current affairs documentary is a valuable record of how Bradford, and Britain, were changing due to immigration from South Asia, particularly Pakistan. It's also a record - a sometimes shocking one - of the racism faced by the incoming South Asian community, England's climate proving cold in more senses than one. This despite the fact that immigrant workers were playing an essential economic and social role in national life, in the case of Bradford becoming vital to its textile industry and bus services, for instance. In exploring these issues the film gives voice both to South Asian immigrants and the 'indigenous' population, some of whose attitudes and language may disturb viewers. Though an episode of a short-lived and little known series (The World Tomorrow), A New Kind of Match exemplifies the approach that Granada Television brought to the ITV network's coverage of current affairs, combining the output of a highly mobile 16mm camera, capturing grainy but vibrant observational imagery of street and factory life, often with synchronised sound, with extensive on-location interviewing and, centering everything, a terse and clear voiceover. It's clear that the programme makers have liberal intentions, to expose discrimination, but in doing so they arguably at times objectify their subjects (assuming the film's audience to be overwhelmingly white) while also allowing the expression of problematic views by some of their participants - though it feels quite likely that they interviewed some people with far worse opinions that were rightly left on the cutting room floor. Patrick Russell