North West”s water workers star in six-part documentary about United Utilities

Phil Black - PII Editor 14/04/2014

95 2 minutes read

Listen to this article

THE UPS and downs of life working for the North West”s water company United Utilities is the subject of a six-part TV documentary starting next week on BBC Two.

And one of stars of the show is John Butcher, the company’s regional aqueducts manager and self-confessed pipeline anorak.

The first episode of Watermen: A Dirty Business will broadcast at 9pm on Tuesday, 15th April on BBC Two, with the rest of the series continuing on Tuesdays at 9pm.

The prime time observational documentary series is made by Mentorn Media, the production company behind BBC Three’s Hotel of Mum and Dad; Sky’s Greggs: More than Meats the Pie and the Channel 4 series The Fried Chicken Shop.

John’s job is to care for United Utilities’ 1,000km of large diameter trunk mains including the enormous Haweswater Aqueduct, and, although he doesn’t appear in the very first episode, he is looking forward to seeing the series.

“When I saw myself on screen the first thing I thought was that I need to lose about three stone! It makes you reflect on the job that we do when you see it through someone else’s eyes. It is really interesting. I am looking forward to seeing what people think. I knew I’d hit the big time when my photo made page 16 of TV and Satellite Weekly,” he said.

“I think they shot more than 750 hours of footage for the six episodes and at times it felt like we saw more of the film crew than our own families. They became friends,” he said.

To make the programme Mentorn cameras got unique access to United Utilities’ 5,000 employees and hundreds more partner staff and customers across the North West from Carlisle to Crewe.

The first episode sees Britain in the midst of a heat wave. 2013 was the UK’s hottest summer in seven years and United Utilities’ Network Inspector Sean has his hands full in Salford. Local residents want to cool down and they’ve decided that illegally opening fire hydrants is the best way to do it. Sean and his partner David deal with a staggering ten hydrant call outs in just one day. As the hot weather continues and staff at the call centre take calls from effected customers it’s Customer Service Technicians Adrian and Wes who fix the, often smelly and revolting sewer problems at ground level. The summer soldiers on and the out of town it”s the water company”s massive reservoirs that are a draw to the sun seekers. Teams patrolling the area have their hands full as the temperatures soar and visitors to the water’s edge don”t heed the imperative No Swimming signs, resulting in a tragic loss of life.

Executive Producer for Mentorn Media, Hannah Wyatt, said, “Without clean water we couldn’t survive. It’s easy to think it just falls from the sky and someone collects it but in fact it’s a huge and complex operation from customer services to ground breaking engineering projects. The series goes behind-the-scenes of this process and meets the unsung heroes who keep our taps flowing.”

United Utilities provides water to more than seven million people in North West England and is the biggest water firm on the FTSE 100. Their staff manage 42,000 kilometres of water pipes and 72,000 kilometres of sewage networks across a vast and varied region with differing environments posing a new set of challenges.

To join the conversation about the show on Twitter use #watermen.