Go Back to Where You Came From

“Is watching six people playing at being refugees likely to bring enlightenment to them, and to viewers, that counteracts the distastefulness and hint of white-saviourism of it all? My own feeling, after watching the single episode available for review, is that allowing people to be honest about their opinions in public is a great deal better than pretending they don’t exist or requiring them to euphemise so ridiculously that they are effectively muted and thus enraged. I am less sure about whether a reality show is the best way to attempt any of this.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“What was Channel 4 thinking? I can see the idea was to educate people with, er, unenlightened views about the people who risk their lives to reach the UK. The show is based on an Australian series that was pretty successful. But this one quickly descended into a coarse, polarised cringeathon, which I suspect was the intention. What about those in between the extremes, the shades of grey people who feel compassion but also concern about immigration? This is a very complex subject but, based on episode one, it is being treated with all the sophistication of a custard pie to the face.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“By choosing, for the sake of ‘entertainment’, only participants with extreme views, there is no room for the middle ground. There’s nobody here to say that, yes, these people deserve our sympathy and help but the UK simply cannot cope with uncontrolled immigration, discuss. Channel 4 claim they want to ‘challenge preconceptions and ignite the national debate’. Whether or not that happens over the next two episodes, what Go Back to Where You Came From does well is provide rare insights into the terrible plight of millions of poor and displaced people.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“Will their eye-opening journey change hearts and minds? I haven’t seen the whole series, but I’ll wager that the answer is no. Because the aim of the show is merely to have gobby people say provocative things, with the aim of going viral. The producers could have found contributors able to argue the anti-immigration case in an intelligent way. But why would they bother?”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“How it is possible to make television so shallow out of suffering so intense, I’m at a loss to understand. The producers achieve it by supercharging the worst elements of other Ch4 shows: the life-on-the-run concept from Hunted, the macho posturing of SAS: Who Dares Wins, and the voyeurism of Benefits Street. But this four-part series is far worse than the sum of its parts. Channel 4 is making capital from illegal immigration, every bit as much as race-baiting thugs like Tommy Robinson.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail