The fast food company lets in the cameras to the chicken sheds, head office and even the customer loos. But it is left up to viewers to draw their own conclusions.
You can imagine the battles that must have gone on during the making of The Billion Dollar Chicken Shop (BBC1). BBC v KFC. So Auntie - terrified of being seen to be advertising on behalf of the fast food chain, funded by our TV licences - keeps darting behind the scenes, poking cameras into dark corners, looking for a story at least, and - best case scenario - a rat. Colonel Sanders, meanwhile, is there in his red apron, holding up a hand, saying [to be read in your best and broadest Kentucky], "No ma'am, this way please," ushering Auntie towards the shiny new branch at Denton Rock in Manchester with nice, blond Beth to show us around.
Nice Beth, 17, does show us around, into the men's loo even ... Oops. "Oh my God, oh my God, don't even go in there. Oh my God, that's bad," she says, quickly closing the cubicle door. It is symptomatic of the entire documentary. That one - whatever it was in there, and I think we can guess - got away, but a urinal full of gold-standard wee at Merry Hill in Dudley is caught by Auntie's lens. Also a drinks container full of chicken guts, post-prepping, at Havant. How she must have punched the air when Havant head chef Chad admits that he used to be an undertaker ("I'm used to handling gruesome things, to be honest with you"). Or when Merry Hill fails its spot check (sorry, its CER - chance excellence review) for not cooking its chicken properly, and having too much chewing gum stuck to the bottom of the tables.
In the end, the result is probably quite fair: neither side will be too upset. And it's up to the viewer what to make of it all. Unexpected and brave openness from an ambitious, successful fast food company operating in a fiercely competitive world? Or an ugly picture of greed and ravenous consumerism fuelled by miserable wages for its workers and miserable lives for its chickens?
I tend more towards the latter, obviously (c'mon, I work at the Guardian). Not so much because of the farming methods, to be honest, though they are not pretty. No natural light, 34,000 birds in one shed, a tide of chicken wading around in its own shit (soaked up by the sawdust, admittedly), then sent to the gas chamber - more poultrycide than countryside. "What is it, Daddy?" my three-year-old asks, when I pause on a close-up of a semi-bald bird. After pig and dog, ugly duckling is the nearest my boy gets to the truth. But if you want your chicken cheap, that's what they - and farming them - looks like, not like the nice brown ones that scurry about in farmyards in children's books.
I am more depressed by the human side of things, though. By Martin, the MD at Woking head office, and his on-message positive management bollocks. Is giving someone a shitty little medal really going to make them forget that they've got a shitty job for shitty money? Yes, apparently it is. Well, that's even more depressing.
There is even a sadness about lovely Beth at Denton Rock, walking home after a 14-hour shift on Valentine's Day. I hope she's saving up to do something outside bucketed chicken, but I'm not overly hopeful. "College dropouts [which she is] always end up in either McDonald's, KFC, or if they're in America, Taco Bell," she says. "Unless you're really really clever, and you'll still probably end up in Pizza Hut. Do you know what I mean?"
MD Martin's big thing, apart from his stupid medals, is growth. "Everything is about growth," he says. "Whether it is about business growth or personal growth, growth is at the forefront of everything that we think about and do every day."
Chicken growth too, accelerated, from zero to the gas chamber in 35 days. And meal growth ("Would you like to go large with that?" says Beth, frequently. "Do you want two hot wings for 99p?"). And waistline growth, of the customers. "This is high-quality food, this is not junk food, this is good food," says Martin. No, Mart, it isn't, nor will repeating it make it true; it's food that is only acceptable when you're very, very drunk.
Then there is the relentless and aggressive branch expansion - around 35 new ones every year in this country, even where they are neither needed nor wanted. Such as Middleton in Greater Manchester, where KFC wins its appeal, against the wishes of the residents, on a technicality: they'll close at 9pm ... for now. Colonel Sanders, sir, frankly you're a cock.
