

Channel 4
12.30AM
Saturday, 3rd August
(Watch it here)
The narrative of heroic firemen scouring the rubble has become to American culture what the myth of Dunkirk's 'little ships' is to our own: terrible defeat abracadabra-ed into a kind of victory. The Jumpers are the opposite. Over 200 came down in a meaty rainfall over the space of an hour as the towers burned. But, as Channel 4 contends, the popular memory is pretty Stalinist, and the photos of them falling a hundred floors have largely been self-censored away by a black-and-white press uneasy with handling the grey areas of suicide. It's a bit like how we've all chosen to forget how Speech DeBelle won the Mercury, and continued to believe it to be a real prize chosen after serious consideration. Except less sinister.
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9/11 was horrible, but taking pictures of doomed people jumping can make for a decent living.

Channel 4
9PM
Wednesday, 31st August
(Watch it here)
The story of the firemen of 9/11 and the jumpers of 9/11 intersects neatly early on in this documentary, when the first fireman to be killed on 9/11 loses his life when he is struck by a falling jumper who recently left the 95th floor. As this story emerges from the mouths of various talking heads, none of his chisel-chinned, lionhearted firefighting compatriots seem to think this is remotely funny. And neither should you. There is certainly no reason to snigger. At all. So don't. Really.Conclusion:
9/11 was horrid and firemen have no sense of humour.

ITV
Thursday, 1st September
9PM
(Watch it here)
This is great. This is basically just an action replay of 9/11, but with director's commentary from Dick Cheney, Rudi Giuliani, Donald Rumsfeld, Laura Bush, and other top-flight types, reminiscing about the day's events as they're re-told, a bit like the cast of Dallas when Justin Lee Collins did Bring Back… Dallas. We've all seen the footage of George W being informed of the attacks while sitting in front of a class of elementary school children. But how many of us have seen an interview with the guy who told him? A serially incompetent Chief Of Staff, who deliberately left the prez dangling, darting back to his seat before Dubya could ask him any further questions, rather than simply stopping the photo opp and whipping the President away for a private debrief. Likewise, we've all seen Bush delivering his crappy crayon speech about how “Freedom has been attacked. And freedom will be defended.” But how many of us have seen the archive footage of him personally downing Flight 93 over Pennsylvania? Best of all is Liz Cheney, who decided to keep minute-by-minute notes on the whole situation from the war room that her and Dick had been evacuated to, which shows an alarming prescience in the face of a developing situation. Did she know something we didn't? What are you hiding, Liz?
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BBC 2
Wednesday, 31st August
23.20PM
(Watch it here)
Sheikh Kallid Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times at Guantanamo and various other US government holiday homes for terror-abetting gents. It was very effective. He apparently confessed to everything under the sun. Ten times the number of terror acts he would ever have been capable of committing even if he was extremely organised and had two PAs. Star turn here is waterboarding fan and former CIA head Michael Hayden. If America was Naziland, he'd be Eichmann. The banality of evil has never been quite so banal as when this tubby, balding former Air Force officer mouths his script about when torture isn't torture. When he isn't directing operatives to cock loaded revolvers in front of hooded prisoners, he probably still enjoys listening to Hooty & The Blowfish. Our own former MI6 head Elisa Manningham-Buller puts in a decent showing, too, in her first ever TV interview, starring as 'The Woman Who Can't Remember', forgetting everything about her life and times, up to and including having no knowledge of extraordinary rendition until 2007. She evidently thought an extraordinary rendition was Sid Vicious doing "My Way". She probably has to write her bank pin code on the back of her library card just to remember it, poor dear.Conclusion:
Being hooded, strapped to a wall and subjected to endless hours of blasting rock music is not torture. It's how Marilyn Manson makes a living.LAURA BUSHED