By Henrietta Knight

It would be too obvious to make facile quips about EastEnders’ Grant Mitchell taking his fight from Albert Square to war torn Syria and Iraq. But this is such an extraordinary documentary that you cannot fail to be impressed by Ross Kemp’s downright guile and bravery.

The Fight Against ISIS (Sky1) sees the 51-year-old actor travelling hundreds of miles with the Kurdish militia who, he says, “are the only people confronting and beating ISIS on the battlefield.”

The scenes he comes across are horrific and tragic. Atrocities such as murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, child slavery and poisoning are commonplace in this land which Kemp describes as “looking like post Armageddon.”

A Yazidi mother of five called Maha from Sinjar, who had recently escaped from ISIS, is a victim of unimaginable loss. She explains how her 11-year-old daughter had been taken as a sex slave while three other children had been poisoned as a punishment for trying to escape. Photos of their dead bodies were displayed on social media as a warning to others. Only her ten-year-old is still alive. They sit together by the side of a track looking stoically into the distance.

Maha tells her heart-breaking story in a matter of fact tone, showing little emotion. This is how hardened the victims of jihad have become.

A pretty 19-year-old Kurdish soldier explains how she shot an ISIS vehicle and killed everyone inside. She recounts her chilling tale as though she were revealing her latest score on Pokemon Go, which, in happier days, would have been a more age appropriate pastime.

When Kemp reveals that he is scared and asks her if she is too, she replies: “No because you are a normal person. We are fighting for a cause that is bigger than us. We are fighting for our freedom.”

A captured IS fighter shows dead shark-eyed indifference through the slit in his balaclava. He stares emotionless and explains how he joined up for the $70 a month. Kemp asks him if he has any regrets? “When you get captured you look at it and ask what’s all this for,” as though he’d chosen the wrong career path an accountant.

He claims at least he didn’t behead anyone. They have a specialist for that.

Kemp comes under enemy fire when he joins the Kurdish fighters on the frontline near the Euphrates river. He shelters in the rubble of a disused building when bullets from an IS sniper 300 metres away begin whizzing overhead and smashing into the wall behind him.

“That’s incoming, that’s incoming, that’s outcoming. That’s close mate. It’s coming off the wall. Look at the hole. F***ing incoming,” he says looking somewhat alarmed.

He is by the side of charismatic Commander Abbu Laila, who has already been shot 11 times. Sadly we learn later in the show that the courageous fighter was killed by a sniper in another battle.

The reason that Kemp and his crew were under such heavy bombardment was because Daesh had heard that a group of Westerners were filming. The Kurds had tapped into their phones and listened to their conversation.

There is a lot of footage of the war in Syria out there, so should Ross put his life on the line in the name of war reporting? He gets the real stories and access that would have taken months of hard work to negotiate. While he is not the most probing of interviewers, he has a gentle technique and asks all the right questions.

In the end the biggest threat to the Kurds, isn’t ISIS it’s Turkey which borders on Syria. The Turkish people look down on them and some regard them as terrorists. And the West are slow to give the YPJ the weapons they so badly need for fear of annoying hardline Islamist Erdogan. Kemp deserves an award for giving them a voice.