Michael Palin Into Iraq
Michael Palin embarks on an epic, revelatory journey through Iraq, one of the most dangerous and complex countries in the world. Following the Tigris river for over 1,000 miles, from its source in eastern Turkey to the Persian Gulf, Michael wants to discover what life is like for the 40 million people who live in Iraq. It’s one of the very few parts of the world he hasn’t visited, but he’s been fascinated by it since he was a child. Iraq is often called the ‘cradle of civilisation’ and Michael wants to explore the country’s past as well as its troubled present.
Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood
Joe Wicks became a national hero during the first lockdown with his hugely successful ‘PE with Joe’ workouts. But in the wake of the pandemic, it’s not just the nation’s physical health that concerns him – it’s our mental health.
Louis Theroux Forbidden America
3 part BBC series : Starts with Extreme and Online : Louis Theroux meets the latest incarnation of the American far right: a political movement born out of the internet and increasingly making its presence felt on the political stage.
Grenfell: The Untold Story
Channel 4 : Artist Constantine Gras filmed inside Grenfell in the years leading up to the devastating fire, creating this powerful record of the residents’ safety concerns as they struggled to be heard.
Shooting Joe Exotic
BBC 2 – 9pm on Monday 4th April : A decade on, Louis revisits Joe Exotic – ‘gay hillbilly’, convicted felon and cult figure. He digs deep into Joe’s background, meets Carole Baskin and asks what made the Tiger King.
Life on the Edge
Louis Theroux reflects on 25 years of documentaries, featuring brand new conversations between him and his most memorable contributors.
The Met: Policing London [series III]
Documentary following the officers of Britain’s biggest and busiest police service as they deal with life, death, crime and its victims, all across the capital.
Pick of the day / week – The Guardian, The Independent, Telegraph
Surviving America’s Most Hated Family
Sunday 14th July @ 9pm on BBC 2
Thirteen years since first encountering one of America’s most notorious hate groups, award-winning film-maker Louis Theroux makes a long-anticipated return to Kansas to spend time with the Westboro Baptist Church – a hugely-controversial Christian ministry that for years has picketed at military funerals and other high-profile events with deliberately provocative and homophobic placards.
In 2006 and again in 2011, Louis uncovered a world of indoctrination masterminded by church-founder and figurehead Pastor Fred Phelps, known amongst his congregation as Gramps. But since his death in 2014, the church has experienced a significant change that has threatened to tear apart what was once a tight-knit family community and challenged their relevance in Trump’s America, where outrageous statements are par for the course. As well as a series of allegations about Pastor Phelps’s final days, including rumours of mental illness and his excommunication, the church has also been hit by a number of high-profile family defections, including Pastor Phelps’s granddaughter Megan, now Westboro’s most prominent critic. Yet despite the unrest, the church has continued to attract new members, including Bradford-born Mathias Holroyd, who sees Westboro’s fire-and-brimstone rhetoric as the perfect tonic to his struggle to fit in with modern-day Britain.
Immersing himself in the strange and unpleasant world of Westboro, Louis explores what happens when a hate-group largely populated by one family loses its patriarch. And, as he discovers, Pastor Phelps’s doctrine of divine hate has cast a shadow not only on the church’s true-believers but also on those who have managed to escape Westboro’s vice-like grip.
Louis Theroux: Mothers On The Edge
Louis Theroux meets mothers experiencing mental health problems postpartum.
Sunday 12th May on BBC2 @ 9pm