Bradford: City of Dreams

Series one, episode two
From the brassed-up cover of ‘Paradise City’ at the outset to the kids lip-synching ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ at its close, the concluding part of ‘Bradford: City of Dreams’ is another relentlessly and sometimes cloyingly upbeat affair. But, with Ukip seemingly resetting the political agenda on a daily basis, it’s also a timely reminder that multiculturalism isn’t doomed to failure. There’s nothing, it seems, that can’t be solved by an entrepreneurial spirit, hard graft and a willingness to adapt: if only Lord Sugar had looked here for his candidates.

Witness Dinesh, who rode the waves of commercial demands from the video-rental boom to mobile repairs, to end up owning a continental food shop and harbouring dreams of expansion. Which is handy, as Marcin, a Polish butcher, is looking to sell his homemade sausage. Sahida makes up tonight’s trio, the owner of a chain of bridal make-up salons who escaped a violent arranged marriage (her recollections cast the briefest of palls over proceedings). A broadening of tone and perspective would have helped the impact of these good-news stories, but it’s a breezy corrective to kneejerk doom-mongering.