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Snide narration and spiteful humour make a dog’s dinner out of this look inside the Mars factory in Melton Mowbray
When it comes to documentaries about factories, British viewers have an impressive amount of choice. If Gregg Wallace in a hairnet shouting about biscuits isn’t enough to put you off Inside the Factory, for example, you can see just how mass-produced food ends up in our shopping baskets. Watching factories at work can be mesmerising in terms of showing off their technical wizardry, like a giant game of Mouse Trap, or in the strangely comforting repetition of it all, like a fidget spinner, if your memory stretches back to those halcyon days of 2017. You might think Britain’s Giant Pet Food Factory (Channel 4), then, is a steady bet for an hour of solid entertainment. It takes the odd appeal of factory TV and combines it with animals – which, as our dog-packed schedules suggest, we also love to watch. But it drains all the joy out of both, and ends up as an ad-friendly slog that lacks any substance. Ironically, it is crying out for a bit of meat on its bones.
Mars, better known for its chocolate, actually makes more pet food than confectionery. It produces two popular brands of cat and dog food, which are mentioned copiously, so no need for an extra plug here. It has a big factory in Melton Mowbray and a research centre nearby in Waltham, where animals live and have their bowel movements studied for science. In one scene, which is meant to be funny, cats sit around a laptop indoors watching a video of squirrels “to teach them about the world”. “All this science goes towards the business of selling pet food,” says the narrator, Robert Webb. Everyone is doing their bit for the business of selling pet food. Continue reading...