Going underground

SOME presenters study their chosen subject for years – even if, like Professor Brian Cox, they also take a detour into pop stardom along the way – while others find their expert status thrust upon them.

Dallas Campbell falls into the latter category. By his own admission, he wasn't that interested in science at school, preferring drama instead, and his earliest TV appearances were in dramas including Spender, Family Affairs and Casualty.

"It was only later in life that I started reading Popular Science and I worked with a director who was very involved with science. That's when I started to appreciate what the science thing was all about, how exciting it was and how beautiful it was. When I was acting, as a hobby, I would devour popular science books and keep up-to-date about what was going on in the science community. And then, suddenly my hobby became my job," he says.

Following a stint on The Gadget Show, he has gone on to appear on Horizon, Bang Goes the Theory, Supersized Earth, Time Scanners and The Treasure Hunters.

In the new two-part documentary he's found another new tale to share with us – and as the title suggests, it involves going underground. The programme argues that to really understand Britain, you have to take a closer look at the hidden wonders lurking under the surface.

Using computer graphics, it strips away the earth to uncover a secret world of rivers, mines and wildlife across the UK. It also looks at the foundations of some of our most iconic structures, as over the course of the two episodes, Campbell looks at how the Shard of London, the tallest skyscraper in Western Europe, stays standing when it is built on soft clay and one of Britain's oldest oak trees has a root system bigger than its branches.

He also learns more about the extraordinary feat of 19th Century underwater engineering that led to the construction of the Forth Railway Bridge, goes canoeing along a secret river beneath the city of Bristol, and abseils down an underground waterfall that's higher than Niagara.

During his subterranean adventures, Dallas meets some of the people who keep Britain running, including the men who drive the largest tunnelling machines in the world, the scientists who hope to uncover some of the secrets of the universe in the UK's deepest mine, and the workers who are clearing the blockages in London's sewers.

But it's not just humans who are busy underground, as Dallas secretly films the badgers which are threatening the foundations of a primary school.

Exposure: How To Buy Your Way Into Britain (ITV, 10.40pm)

AS the Government looks to take an increasingly hardline approach to immigration, Exposure investigates a massive loophole that remains at the heart of our system – sham marriage.

In March this year new rules were introduced to tighten up regulations and cut the number of sham marriages taking place in Britain. Featuring undercover filming, How to Buy Your Way into Britain reveals that despite the promised Government crackdown, racketeers are still making millions by organising sham marriages, forging passports and human trafficking.

The programme includes covertly filmed footage of sham marriage fixers, with one describing fake brides as ‘puppets’ and boasting about the number of illegal weddings they are able to organise every year.

They tell an undercover reporter they couldn’t care less about the change in the law, and plan to carry on regardless, exploiting vulnerable women and making huge amounts of cash at the taxpayers’ expense. One says: “It’s too soft here, the system... This whole game is peanuts.”

Eminent lawyer and former CPS chief crown prosecutor Nazir Afzal views the footage, and says: “All of it is criminal… And it demonstrates how big a scale of the problem we face.”

Viv Hardwick