Grounded with Louis Theroux
Louis Theroux’s using the lockdown to track down some high-profile people he’s been longing to talk to – a fascinating mix of the celebrated, the controversial and the mysterious. [podcast / BBC radio 4]
Louis Theroux: Selling Sex
Louis Theroux meets the women legally participating in the new sexual economy, exploring whether selling sex can ever be a healthy way to make money.
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
Louis Theroux: The Night in Question
Louis Theroux heads to US college campuses and comes face-to-face with students accused of sexual assault.
Louis Theroux Altered States
Louis Theroux explores unusual ways modern America deals with birth, love and death.
starts on BBC 2 4th November
The Prosecutors – series 2
Extraordinary insight into the work of prosecutors tackling an organized criminal gang flying drugs into prisons and a shadowy network using children as slaves in UK nail bars.