Dirty Business review: This terrific drama uses fury to defeat the weasel words of the water industry

Weasel words such as 'feedback' and 'pivot'. Phrases like 'a desk-based approach' and 'retention payments'.

Of course, you can't approach anything from behind a desk, and a retention payment is simply another way of saying 'bonus' – those enormous cheques the chief execs receive for failing slightly less than their predecessor.

And they are the kind of words which serve to illustrate our powerlessness in the face of corporatism. The thinking that contends the 'market' will be able to sort out our ageing infrastructure.

And that somehow, at the same time, the 'market' will be able to regulate itself, will own up to wrong-doing and put things right at the earliest opportunity.

We now know, of course, that this is all mealy-mouthed bunk. More words that sound like nothing and mean even less.

You may have guessed that Dirty Business – written brilliantly by Joseph Bullman - is enough to make any sane individual froth with fury, like a chemical spill on a Hampshire chalk stream.

Charting the efforts of former police detective Ash Smith (David Thewlis) and Oxford university professor Peter Hammond (Jason Watkins) to bring the pollution of the River Windrush, which winds its way through their chocolate box Oxfordshire village, to the attention of the Environment Agency (EA).

It gradually widens its scope to take in the whole country, and the way that our water companies seem to release raw human sewage into our seas and rivers with impunity.

It also takes in the cost of these 'spills' – like the Preen family, whose daughter Heather contracts a strain of E.coli from human sewage spilled on Dawlish beach in Devon, and dies in agony two weeks later.

Heartbreakingly, we see the inquest into Heather's death, at which South West Water refuses to take responsibility, and effectively colludes with the so-called watchdog the Environment Agency to minimise the effects.

“We went on holiday a family of four,” says mum Julie. “And we came back a family of three.”

The burden of Heather's death breaks the family, and dad Mark takes his own life.

It's vignettes such as these that take the drama out of the corporate and impersonal, and pulls the individual and the personal to the forefront.

It makes the battle for action over the water companies' apparent disregard for the law that archetype of literature – the David vs Goliath story.

It doesn't descend into cliché, however. There are flashbacks to the Preen family and their heartache, direct-to-camera sequences – particularly effective when Asim Chaudry, as a water engineer, lays bare the decrepit state of the sewage works.

And there are Thewlis and Watkins, who are terrific as the single-minded, nerdy, implacably determined Ash and Peter.

The constant battles Ash and Peter have to fight to get any cogent response from the water companies or the EA also takes its toll.

“We're not going to make a difference,” says Peter. “It doesn't matter what we show them, they're not going to do anything.”

And maybe all these words really are sound and fury, signifying nothing.

But as the incredible impact of Mr Bates vs the Post Office has shown, if we get angry, we get results.

We should get angry. We shouldn't accept the weasel words of corporate-speak. We should start asking what it all really means.

After all, words don't have to be euphemisms. They can tell the truth in a clear, unambiguous way. And that's what Dirty Business tries to do. The fact it will make you furious means it – unlike the water companies, the EA and the government – is doing its job.