'The Navigators' is a well made and moving TV drama. The largely unknown cast play their parts well. Set in 1995 during the privatization of British Rail, 'The Navigators' depicts the change in working relationships between management and workforce amongst a group of trackside workers at a small depot near Sheffield. We see the men's jobs gradually being phased out as different shareholders buy up the business. The eventual closure of the depot and the offer of redundancy leads to the men working long hours on the trackside for agencies who will even cut corners on health and safety to get the 'best deal'. In the end this leads to a tragic event, which puts the workmates in a terrible dilemma, as it is they and not the agency or employers that would be held responsible for their colleague's accident.
The drama is not all moribund and there are typical touches of Loach humour, such as the men getting splashed by the flushing toilet of a passing train and a clever workplace wind up around a tin of sardines. The main character Paul (Joe Duttine) is well played and Loach slowly builds up our sympathies for the men and the difficulties that their precarious employment places on domestic and family life. At the end it would be easy to condemn the men's conspiracy to cover up the accident, but Loach also points towards the bigger picture which leads to health and safety being criminally relegated to an inconvenience for employers rather than a priority.
Perhaps this film was a little too long, but Loach puts across well the suffering caused by job insecurity and how the awful, euphemistic management 'double speak' has smothered industrial relations and taken us into a new era of low-rights and low-paid work.
The drama is not all moribund and there are typical touches of Loach humour, such as the men getting splashed by the flushing toilet of a passing train and a clever workplace wind up around a tin of sardines. The main character Paul (Joe Duttine) is well played and Loach slowly builds up our sympathies for the men and the difficulties that their precarious employment places on domestic and family life. At the end it would be easy to condemn the men's conspiracy to cover up the accident, but Loach also points towards the bigger picture which leads to health and safety being criminally relegated to an inconvenience for employers rather than a priority.
Perhaps this film was a little too long, but Loach puts across well the suffering caused by job insecurity and how the awful, euphemistic management 'double speak' has smothered industrial relations and taken us into a new era of low-rights and low-paid work.