Carry on Brussels, review – a documentary series that gives Leavers few reasons for regret

Britons have historically struggled to pay real attention to the EU. It was a grey, obscure place where grey, obscure people passed regulations to make bananas square or egg cartons decimal. We have never given its giant, 750-member Parliament the same attention that we give our own, and some of us pay little enough mind to that.

Now Channel 4 hopes to address this imbalance, just as Britain prepares to leave. Carry on Brussels follows various MEPs through their “curious glass palace” as they struggle to find purpose in an institution they will soon be kicked out of.

In last night’s opener, we met Seb Dance, a fresh-faced Labour MEP who chose to immerse himself in the minutiae of committee negotiations. Occasionally he read out abusive emails from Brexiteers and laughed sadly. Alyn Smith of the SNP held a reception but was chagrined when his opponents scarfed down the nibbles without mingling. Ukip’s Gerard Batten, visibly embittered by his long battle with Brussels bureaucracy, skirmished with his press officer as he tried to drum up publicity for an alternative Brexit plan so impeccably Eurosceptic that it regarded Article 50 itself as an irredeemable instrument of appeasement. Clearly, it’s no fun to regard your whole job as a farce.

In style, Carry on Brussels closely resembled BBC Two’s Inside the Commons, but the comparison is not purely flattering. That programme managed to cast the Mother of Parliaments in a warm light, as body of hard-working if hard-nosed idealists whose work was genuinely important. Here, by contrast, there was an air of well-intentioned pointlessness, which the sly tone did little to dispel.

Perhaps that is down to the European Parliament’s strange political position: despite representing an enormous number of people, it does not have much power compared to the other EU institutions, so the EU looks undemocratic; yet if it were to take more power it would be accused of seeking to supersede national governments. Either way, the show made MEPs’ work look like so much displacement activity.

It was the emotional beats and personalities that proved most enjoyable. At one point, after clearing a difficult political hurdle, Seb Dance broke into tears, saying: “My mum would be very proud – if she could see me.” There is indeed a nobility in serving one’s post after one’s own people have voted to abolish it. But based on this episode, Carry on Brussels will give Leavers few reasons for regret.