Fly-on-the-wall tv documentary shows are so commonplace today that it is hard to imagine what a big deal a series like The Duty Men was back in 1987 – made in the days of heavy film cameras and sound equipment in a much less open society.  While the 1986 drama series, The Collectors had proven unsuccessful for the BBC, the Corporation had an ace up its sleeve. During the same time period, documentary maker Paul Hamann was collaborating with HM Customs and Excise on the 1987 BBC2 documentary series: The Duty Men. Hamann had made over 40 documentaries for the BBC (as a producer for the BBC’s Open-Door Unit, he helped residents of Belfast’s Divis Flats in the Falls Road make a documentary about their poor housing conditions). His 1985 ‘Real Lives’ documentary about extremism in Northern Ireland was the subject of a special meeting of the BBC Board of Governors after an article by the Sunday Times resulted in Home Secretary Leon Brittan (who had not seen the film) demanding the B...

   Ewen Solon, Callum Mill and James Grant The Revenue Men was a 1960’s BBC series about the Scottish division of HM Customs and Excise’s Investigation Branch. It was made in the tradition of Forbidden Cargo (1954), based on fact but told in a style which captured the imagination of the public. As the publicity for the series explained, “the emphasis is new. This is a realistic series which does not find smuggling romantic, which presents the men of Customs and Excise as the guardians of purchase tax and exchange control regulations, as the collectors of vast sums in indirect taxation, as those who come to grips with the 'cheaters' of international finance, with the traffic in illegal drugs, with whisky hi-jackers, and with the routing of strategic cargoes to forbidden countries.” The series dealt with The Investigation Branch (IB) rather than uniformed waterguard at ports, harbours and airports or the Outdoor Branch checking on fuel and spirits tax. Publicity said, “ IB offic...