Blackburn, Lancashire: a town with about 100,000 white British people and 40,000 Asian or British Asian people, many of whom are Muslim. Ten years ago, Panorama went to find out how Blackburn’s two biggest ethnic groups were getting along. The answer, in short: they weren’t. “We’re living two different lives here, aren’t we?” taxi driver Muhammad Nawaz said to taxi driver Ian Goodliffe. “We’re just going to grow apart, and it’s going to get worse.”

Now Panorama has gone back to see if Muhammad’s prediction has come true. The answer, in short: it has.

The experts and the numbers say it. Prof Ted Cantle who wrote the report on the race riots of northern England in 2001, and who featured in the original programme, returns. “Segregation in Blackburn is increasing, in residential terms, in school terms, probably in social terms as well,” he says.

The voices of the people are saying it. “They’ll take over eventually,” says a drinker in the Bee Hive pub. “They have their way of life, we have our way of life,” says another. “They’re taking our culture, bit by bit.”

An Asian Blackburn resident says that attitudes toward British Muslims have changed dramatically over the past decade, in large part because of terror attacks. “It’s having a huge impact on the Muslims,” he says. “We’re having to apologise for others.”

Fan the flames with negative media portrayal, far-right exploitation, the government’s controversial Prevent strategy, and don’t be surprised if racial tensions boil over. The way we have homogenised Muslim communities has been a disaster, says Cantle. And, of course, it’s not just about Blackburn. The polarisation of populations is increasing in towns all over the country.

The government hasn’t helped much either. Dame Louise Casey was commissioned to write a review of integration policy. The government ignored it because it mentioned immigration; the pace and scale of it. “Too difficult … too hot to handle,” says the Labour MP Chuka Umunna.

Muhammad Nawaz … ‘See what happens, next 10 years.’ Photograph: BBC

Nor has new legislation that limits faith schools from having more than half their intake from any one faith had much effect; existing faith schools don’t have to – and don’t – adopt the policy.

“Nadiya Hussain in the Bake Off competition has probably done more for British Muslim relations than 10 years of government policy,” says Cantle, and he doesn’t look as if he is joking.

Any other good news, or hope, apart from Nadiya? A mixed youth group, tackling the fear of the unknown together. There’s a Sunday-morning kids football game where an all-Asian team are playing an all-white team. It says a lot about a situation when Asian people v white people is good news, but at least they’re in the same place, at the same time, doing the same thing, together. It’s integration, of sorts.

Otherwise, this thoughtful, thorough, balanced doc is thoroughly bleak – both in the picture it paints and in its outlook. The only fun comes from the soundtrack: Madness, the Clash’s White Riot for the far right, Ghost Town by the Specials (obviously), all the clubs are being closed down. Golden Brown by the Stranglers, though, wasn’t that about heroin?

The taxi drivers from the original film meet, symbolically, on a bridge between their communities. “We’re integrating even less than we were before,” says Ian.

“See what happens, next 10 years,” says Muhammad. They shake hands and go their separate ways.

The best thing ever for a BBC newsreader has to be when the drama department calls and asks you to appear in something, for authenticity’s sake, hasn’t it? It’s Ben Brown’s turn here, in Silent Witness (BBC One). He has got the US ambassador in the studio with him, talking about a more assertive approach to international diplomacy from Washington. “Ambassador, can I start off by asking you: why has the US administration been so intent on escalating a disagreement into a full-scale military crisis?”

That rings plenty true, too, especially with Trump on the screen in the background. Then, when a US aide is murdered and they – the Americans and the Lyell Centre lot – start squabbling about whose case it is, the special relationship comes under strain. Silent Witness gets topical shock.

Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) forms her own one – special relationship – with one of them, Matt the hot one (Michael Landes). Not driven by diplomacy, I think.

And there’s the body: he has been sat on a bench and had his arm tucked into his jacket. “What’s with the Nelson?” asks Nikki. Actually, not Nelson, it turns out …