Derek vs Derek review: Devon neighbours clash over rewilding

Two Devon neighbours named Derek go head to head over the future of the British countryside in Derek vs Derek, a documentary that turns the rewilding debate into a warm, wry rivalry with real bite.

The film, reviewed by The Guardian on 1 October 2026, centres on Derek Gow and Derek Banbury, two men in late middle age whose roughly equal-sized plots — about 120 hectares each — abut each other near Dartmoor. Both wear wellies. Both carry what the review gently calls bellies. Beyond that, they agree on almost nothing.

Who are the two Dereks?

Banbury is the twinkly-eyed, West Country-accented traditional farmer. He rears dairy cows and plants crops, and just about gets by: the supermarkets, his main customers, keep the price of milk incredibly low. His son works beside him and is set to inherit the farm, just as Derek did. His wife, Linda, supplements the family income by running holiday cottages.

Gow, his neighbour, stands on the pro-environmentalist side of the argument. The documentary frames their opposing views as a proxy war over environmental damage, agriculture and the conservation of the countryside — with some troublesome wild boar thrown in for good measure.

What does the film achieve?

According to the Guardian review, the documentary's trick is to find engaging characters who happen to hold opposing points of view. The result is "ebulliently accessible but never tacky" — a film that explores the debates around farming and conservation without ever being preachy, dry or patronising.

The reviewer notes that by the end most viewers would reckon the pro-environmentalists "pretty much win the argument". Yet the conservative element of the farming community gets to have its say and make its case. In the process, it earns sympathy for a way of life that is itself endangered — albeit partly because of its own self-destructive practices.

Why does it work?

The film's strength lies in what it refuses to do. It does not lecture. It does not stack the deck against either man. Instead, it lets two neighbours with roughly equal stakes in the same patch of Devon argue it out, and lets the audience draw its own conclusions.

That balance gives the documentary its bite. The sympathy extended to Banbury's embattled, low-margin farming life sits alongside the case for rewilding, and neither side emerges as a caricature.

For viewers weighing where British agriculture goes next — squeezed by supermarket pricing on one side and environmental pressure on the other — Derek vs Derek offers a human-scale entry point into a national argument, told through two men whose only real differences are what they believe the land is for.