Derek vs Derek review – farmers go head to head in rewilding rivalry with real bite

Two Devon neighbours face off over the future of the countryside in this warm, wry documentary about farming, conservation and some troublesome wild boar

This ebulliently accessible but never tacky British documentary finds a delightfully sneaky way to explore debates around environmental damage, agriculture and the countryside without ever being preachy, dry or patronising. The trick is to find engaging characters who happen to have opposing points of view, and while by the end most viewers would reckon that the pro-environmentalists pretty much win the argument, the conservative element of the farming community gets to have its say and make its case, earning sympathy in the process for a way of life that is itself endangered, albeit partly because of its own self-destructive practices.

The twosome at the heart of the story are neighbours Derek Gow and Derek Banbury, two men in late middle age in wellies with bellies whose roughly equal-sized allotments of land (about 120 hectares) abut each other in Devon, near Dartmoor. Twinkly eyed, West Country-accented Banbury is a regular farmer like many others across the UK, rearing dairy cows and planting crops, and just about getting by as the price of milk is kept incredibly low thanks to his main customers, the supermarkets. His son works beside him and is set to inherit the spread just as Derek did, while Derek’s wife, Linda, supplements their income by running holiday cottages.