Rainbow Warrior review – spies bomb activists in truly gasp-inducing TV

The bizarre story of French secret agents blowing up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand is rivetingly retold by the eco-veterans – revealing an increasingly unhinged litany of lies, denials and James Bond-style antics When DS Terry Batchelor received the call informing him of the whereabouts of the French couple suspected of bombing the Rainbow Warrior, he was eating a pie.

The suspects were in Auckland, he learned, preparing to return their hired Toyota HiAce campervan to the rental depot.

A scoop! Batchelor, who was based nearby, gathered his team and set off in hot – and ultimately successful – pursuit.

And the pie? “Actually,” reflects the retiree, peering at us over his moustache, “I hadn’t started the pie yet.” A pause, heavy with the threat of italics.

“But I was about to.” There is a lot of this sort of thing in Sky Documentaries’ Rainbow Warrior, a feature-length retelling of the events surrounding the July 1985 sinking of the titular Greenpeace flagship.

That is to say; granular recollections, delivered by elderly men with combative facial hair, seemingly irrelevant in isolation but riveting and oddly comforting when viewed as part of a startling and frequently unhinged whole.

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