Carry on Brussels review – a sorry slice of EU parliament life

A Labour MEP holds up a funny sign, the SNP's man frets over free wine and Ukip's Gerard Batten hones his Partridge-esque victimhood. It's tragic, comic and teeth-grindingly frustrating

The European parliament is "one of the most misunderstood institutions in the world", argues Carry on Brussels, a fly-on-the-wall documentary that exists in a kind of paradox. Had more effort been made to explain exactly what MEPs do prior to 2016, then Brexit voters might not have been so convinced of their uselessness; then again, a film about an institution running smoothly and fairly doesn't pack a sufficient dramatic punch. So here we are, fiddling while Brussels burns - for the UK, at least. Director Christian Trumble spins comedy and tragedy into a watchable, if at times teeth-grindingly frustrating three-part series that pulls off a remarkably balanced portrait of seven MEPs from across the political spectrum, all working to very different ends.

This first episode sets out its W1A-ish tone - we hear that SNP MEP Alyn Smith has booked "the third-floor coffee lounge" for a charity mixer, and he grumbles that Ukip aren't mingling and are only there for the free wine - primarily by concentrating on the most embattled of the bunch. Seb Dance, a young Labour MEP, is notorious for holding up a sign reading: "He's lying to you" behind Nigel Farage as he spoke in the EU parliament. As a result, he says, he gets tweets calling him a "knob", a "big girl's blouse" and a "shitbag", and strangers offering to take him outside. He's earnest and so upset by Brexit that, at one point, it moves him to tears. Dance has spent six months working on getting a sustainability report passed. We follow him to the crucial vote.