Under the terms of the ERA Licence, we record a variety of television programmes for use by our staff and students in their courses.
This blog is a record of those programmes.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Kara Tointon: Don't Call Me Stupid
'I want to know where my personality begins and dyslexia ends. I'm fed up with putting things on hold and having this vision that one day I'm going to be something different to who I am now'.
Actress Kara Tointon dreams about reading a novel cover to cover. Standing in her way is her dyslexia. Kara is now wondering whether this neurological condition is affecting her work as an actress and even her day-to-day life.
In this intimate documentary, Kara is tested and undergoes specialist help. She also meets other young dyslexics, many of whom share Kara's experience of feeling 'stupid'.
As Kara faces some difficult truths about herself, will she be able to take control of her condition and transform her life?
BBC3 11th November 2010 60 minutes
Actress Kara Tointon dreams about reading a novel cover to cover. Standing in her way is her dyslexia. Kara is now wondering whether this neurological condition is affecting her work as an actress and even her day-to-day life.
In this intimate documentary, Kara is tested and undergoes specialist help. She also meets other young dyslexics, many of whom share Kara's experience of feeling 'stupid'.
As Kara faces some difficult truths about herself, will she be able to take control of her condition and transform her life?
BBC3 11th November 2010 60 minutes
Gods and Monsters: Homer's Odyssey
Virginia Woolf said Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan Horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told. Now British poet Simon Armitage goes on his own Greek adventure, following in the footsteps of one of his own personal heroes. Yet Simon ponders the question of whether he even likes the guy.
BBC4 8th November 2010 60 minutes
BBC4 8th November 2010 60 minutes
Wait Til Your Teacher Gets Home
When teenagers are out of control at school what can the teachers do? We see teachers getting extraordinary powers to take over young pupils' lives and stop them throwing away their considerable potential.
Expect tears and tantrums as badly-behaved schoolgirl Loretta Cook gets the shock of her life. Her mum hands control of the family over to her teacher, for one week, in a last-ditch attempt to sort out the teenager's bad behaviour. Spending a week with her teacher is Loretta's worst nightmare - and when Miss Dudley discovers that the parents are a big part of the problem, mum and dad are in the firing line too.
It's an unexpected battle of wills between the young teacher, who has never been in a student's home before and has no kids of her own, and Loretta's recently divorced parents, who can barely speak to each other. With the family fighting against the rules and structure Miss Dudley introduces, the teacher struggles to take command. With the whole project at risk, can she turn it around and convince the family that teacher knows best?
With 6,000 thousand children getting expelled every year and 2,000 being sent home every day, can radical interventions like this help to stop the bad behaviour before it reaches breaking point?
BBC3 28th October 2010 60 minutes
Expect tears and tantrums as badly-behaved schoolgirl Loretta Cook gets the shock of her life. Her mum hands control of the family over to her teacher, for one week, in a last-ditch attempt to sort out the teenager's bad behaviour. Spending a week with her teacher is Loretta's worst nightmare - and when Miss Dudley discovers that the parents are a big part of the problem, mum and dad are in the firing line too.
It's an unexpected battle of wills between the young teacher, who has never been in a student's home before and has no kids of her own, and Loretta's recently divorced parents, who can barely speak to each other. With the family fighting against the rules and structure Miss Dudley introduces, the teacher struggles to take command. With the whole project at risk, can she turn it around and convince the family that teacher knows best?
With 6,000 thousand children getting expelled every year and 2,000 being sent home every day, can radical interventions like this help to stop the bad behaviour before it reaches breaking point?
BBC3 28th October 2010 60 minutes
Sunday, 14 November 2010
How to Get a Head in Sculpture
From the heads of Roman Emperors to the 'blood head' of contemporary British artist Marc Quinn, the greatest figures in world sculpture have continually turned to the head to re-evaluate what it means to be human and to reformulate how closely sculpture can capture it.
Witty, eclectic and insightful, this film is a journey through the most enduring subject for world sculpture, one that carves a path through politics and religion, the ancient and the modern.
Witty, eclectic and insightful, this film is a journey through the most enduring subject for world sculpture, one that carves a path through politics and religion, the ancient and the modern.
Actor David Thewlis has his head sculpted by three different sculptors, while the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, artist Maggi Hambling and art critic Rachel Johnston discuss art's most enduring preoccupation - ourselves.
BBC4. 28th October 2010. 60 minutes
Saturday, 13 November 2010
David Attenborough's First Life
In fifty years of broadcasting, Sir David Attenborough has travelled the globe to document the living world in all its wonder. Now, in the landmark series, David Attenborough's First Life, he completes his journey by going back in time to the roots of the tree of life, in search of the very first animals.
Attenborough's journey begins in a forest near his childhood home in Leicester, where a fossil discovery transformed our understanding of the evolution of complex life. Travelling to the fog bound coastline of Newfoundland and the Australian outback, Attenborough unearths the earliest forms of animal life to exist on Earth.
These bizarre and wonderful creatures are brought to life with the help of cutting edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first animal forms that moved to the first mouths that ate, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.
Attenborough's journey continues in Canada's Rocky Mountains, where fossils document an explosion in animal diversity never seen before or since. Travelling from there to North Africa, the rainforests of Australia and the east coast of Scotland, Attenborough discovers how animals evolved to conquer not only the oceans but also the land and air.
These remote and fascinating creatures are brought to life as never before with the help of cutting-edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first large predators to the first legs on land, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.
BBC2. 5-12 November 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Attenborough's journey begins in a forest near his childhood home in Leicester, where a fossil discovery transformed our understanding of the evolution of complex life. Travelling to the fog bound coastline of Newfoundland and the Australian outback, Attenborough unearths the earliest forms of animal life to exist on Earth.
These bizarre and wonderful creatures are brought to life with the help of cutting edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first animal forms that moved to the first mouths that ate, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.
Attenborough's journey continues in Canada's Rocky Mountains, where fossils document an explosion in animal diversity never seen before or since. Travelling from there to North Africa, the rainforests of Australia and the east coast of Scotland, Attenborough discovers how animals evolved to conquer not only the oceans but also the land and air.
These remote and fascinating creatures are brought to life as never before with the help of cutting-edge scientific technology and photorealistic visual effects. From the first large predators to the first legs on land, these were creatures that evolved the traits and tools that allow all animals, including ourselves, to survive to this day.
BBC2. 5-12 November 2010. 2 x 60 minutes
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Dispatches: Britain's Street Kids
Every day hundreds of kids are forced to leave home. According to charities like Railway Children, the number of homeless children is bound to rise as a result of the recent government budget cuts.
This crisis in Britain's families has created an itinerant population of young people without support or a roof over their heads. The state has to provide, at an immense cost, while voluntary organisations try to plug the gaps in the face of drastic cutbacks and closures.
Dispatches follows four teenagers over six months who are struggling to fend for themselves on the streets. They're simultaneously at risk and a risk to society, and for all four of them drugs become a way of life, a means of dealing with the stresses and challenges of life away from family and home comforts.
All talk candidly and eloquently about why they take flight: family breakdowns, addiction, violence, neglect and abuse. The unspoken truth behind their stories points to both inadequate parenting and severe lack of consistent and effective care once they have left home.
Dispatches explores the hidden world of runaway and evicted teenagers, giving them a voice for the first time, and celebrating their extraordinary ability to fend for themselves.
Channel Four. 1st November 2010. 60 minutes
This crisis in Britain's families has created an itinerant population of young people without support or a roof over their heads. The state has to provide, at an immense cost, while voluntary organisations try to plug the gaps in the face of drastic cutbacks and closures.
Dispatches follows four teenagers over six months who are struggling to fend for themselves on the streets. They're simultaneously at risk and a risk to society, and for all four of them drugs become a way of life, a means of dealing with the stresses and challenges of life away from family and home comforts.
All talk candidly and eloquently about why they take flight: family breakdowns, addiction, violence, neglect and abuse. The unspoken truth behind their stories points to both inadequate parenting and severe lack of consistent and effective care once they have left home.
Dispatches explores the hidden world of runaway and evicted teenagers, giving them a voice for the first time, and celebrating their extraordinary ability to fend for themselves.
Channel Four. 1st November 2010. 60 minutes
What the Green Movement Got Wrong
A group of environmentalists across the world believe that, in order to save the planet, humanity must embrace the very science and technology they once so stridently opposed.
In this film, these life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, which include GM crops and nuclear energy. They argue that by clinging to an ideology formed more than 40 years ago, the traditional green lobby has failed in its aims and is ultimately harming its own environmental cause.
As author and environmentalist Mark Lynas says, 'Being an environmentalist was part of my identity and most of my friends were environmentalists. We were involved in the whole movement together. It took me years to actually begin to question those core, cherished beliefs. It was so challenging it was almost like going over to the dark side. It was a like a horrible dark secret you couldn't share with anyone.'
Also on the disk is the Live Debate which followed the programme:
Krishnan Guru-Murthy chairs a studio debate to discuss the issues raised in the documentary, What the Green Movement Got Wrong.
The film's leading protagonists, former anti-GM activist and author Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand, a pioneer of the original green lobby, face critics from today's green movement in front of an informed studio audience.
Leading policy makers, commentators, scientists, entrepreneurs and economists debate the impact the green movement has had on global climate change and whether embracing the very science and technology the greens once so stridently opposed, such as GM crops and nuclear energy, would be more successful in reducing the risks to the planet from global warming.
Channel Four. 4th November 2010. 75 and 60 minutes
In this film, these life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, which include GM crops and nuclear energy. They argue that by clinging to an ideology formed more than 40 years ago, the traditional green lobby has failed in its aims and is ultimately harming its own environmental cause.
As author and environmentalist Mark Lynas says, 'Being an environmentalist was part of my identity and most of my friends were environmentalists. We were involved in the whole movement together. It took me years to actually begin to question those core, cherished beliefs. It was so challenging it was almost like going over to the dark side. It was a like a horrible dark secret you couldn't share with anyone.'
Also on the disk is the Live Debate which followed the programme:
Krishnan Guru-Murthy chairs a studio debate to discuss the issues raised in the documentary, What the Green Movement Got Wrong.
The film's leading protagonists, former anti-GM activist and author Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand, a pioneer of the original green lobby, face critics from today's green movement in front of an informed studio audience.
Leading policy makers, commentators, scientists, entrepreneurs and economists debate the impact the green movement has had on global climate change and whether embracing the very science and technology the greens once so stridently opposed, such as GM crops and nuclear energy, would be more successful in reducing the risks to the planet from global warming.
Channel Four. 4th November 2010. 75 and 60 minutes
Renaissance Revolution
The new series on Renaissance painting, written and presented by Matthew Collings, begins with an artistic investigation into one of the most radiant and beautiful images in all of art history, The Madonna of the Meadow, painted in 1505 by Raphael.
Renaissance art has become part of the 21st-century heritage industry but when Raphael was alive, it was a startling new form of visual expression, and Raphael's vibrant 'realism' was striking and fresh. It became the model for western art for the next 400 years, right up until the birth of Modernism.
As much as it was a cultural 'rebirth', the Renaissance was also a revolution in ideas about reality. Matthew Collings sets out to remind us of how radical Renaissance paintings were when they were made, as well as opening our eyes to what is still truly great about them. In this programme he deconstructs The Madonna of the Meadow with the help of the very latest high-resolution digital technology, which allows him to explore the inner secrets of Raphael's painterly effects with a clarity and at a level of detail never before seen on television.
As Matthew says, it is a journey 'to the other side of an illusion', revealing how Raphael created the alluring images that were so appealing to his wealthy Renaissance clients - including the Pope - and which entranced artists for centuries after his death. Matthew explains the secret to Raphael's vibrant colour harmonies, which the artist grasped intuitively, long before the advent of colour 'theory'; and Raphael also knew how to exploit colour effects to create the impression of extraordinary depth in his paintings.
---
In the second programme of his new series on Renaissance painting, artist and writer Matthew Collings steps into the mysterious invented world of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, painted c.1505.
This imposing work, full of strange and fantastical details, contains one of the most famous images in all of art: a man with a tree for a body, who gazes out at us from the section of the painting representing hell. The tree-man's face is generally thought to be the artist's self-portrait but, like almost everything else about Hieronymus Bosch - including the meaning of this, his most famous painting - no one knows for sure.
Using the latest high-resolution digital technology, Matthew Collings is able to explore this extraordinary painting in minute detail and unravel some of the arcane messages that Bosch has woven into it through his use of symbols and unsettling inversions of scale - giant birds drop fruit into the mouths of nude humans, slithering creatures invade paradise, a devil-bird devours a man whole.
Just as the images in Bosch's painting were unusual for the Renaissance, his technique was also unconventional for the time. Bosch worked quickly with gloopy blobs of thick paint to conjure up the fine details of a fish's eye or the spines on the back of a porcupine from a few brushstrokes. The liveliness of Bosch's technique is one of the qualities that makes his painting seem strangely modern.
The Garden of Earthly Delights reflects the new way of thinking about the world that the Renaissance ushered in - ideas about free will and morality that challenged the old religious order and which posed a question: perhaps heaven and hell are not places your soul might end up in, but states of being that are always inside you?
---
Matthew Collings concludes the series by looking at the invention of Renaissance painting.
The Baptism of Christ by Italian master Piero Della Francesca showed the household names of the High Renaissance how to use the big new trick of Renaissance painting - illusionism and perspective. Without him their achievements would have been impossible, but change came so rapidly in the Renaissance that the qualities that made Piero famous in his own time quickly went out of fashion.
The Baptism was bought for the National Gallery in 1861 and later Cezanne and Picasso saw him as the real deal: the authentic, honest Renaissance, a model for modern painting. Now he is so in tune with secular modern taste that a tourist trail links his work in the beautiful hills of Umbria, Tuscany, and a few galleries around the world who own a precious panel by him.
Collings follows his trail and hunts down the forensic detail in the highest-resolution images of paintings yet seen on television.
BBC2. 16-30 October 2010. 3 x 60 minutes on one disk.
Renaissance art has become part of the 21st-century heritage industry but when Raphael was alive, it was a startling new form of visual expression, and Raphael's vibrant 'realism' was striking and fresh. It became the model for western art for the next 400 years, right up until the birth of Modernism.
As much as it was a cultural 'rebirth', the Renaissance was also a revolution in ideas about reality. Matthew Collings sets out to remind us of how radical Renaissance paintings were when they were made, as well as opening our eyes to what is still truly great about them. In this programme he deconstructs The Madonna of the Meadow with the help of the very latest high-resolution digital technology, which allows him to explore the inner secrets of Raphael's painterly effects with a clarity and at a level of detail never before seen on television.
As Matthew says, it is a journey 'to the other side of an illusion', revealing how Raphael created the alluring images that were so appealing to his wealthy Renaissance clients - including the Pope - and which entranced artists for centuries after his death. Matthew explains the secret to Raphael's vibrant colour harmonies, which the artist grasped intuitively, long before the advent of colour 'theory'; and Raphael also knew how to exploit colour effects to create the impression of extraordinary depth in his paintings.
---
In the second programme of his new series on Renaissance painting, artist and writer Matthew Collings steps into the mysterious invented world of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, painted c.1505.
This imposing work, full of strange and fantastical details, contains one of the most famous images in all of art: a man with a tree for a body, who gazes out at us from the section of the painting representing hell. The tree-man's face is generally thought to be the artist's self-portrait but, like almost everything else about Hieronymus Bosch - including the meaning of this, his most famous painting - no one knows for sure.
Using the latest high-resolution digital technology, Matthew Collings is able to explore this extraordinary painting in minute detail and unravel some of the arcane messages that Bosch has woven into it through his use of symbols and unsettling inversions of scale - giant birds drop fruit into the mouths of nude humans, slithering creatures invade paradise, a devil-bird devours a man whole.
Just as the images in Bosch's painting were unusual for the Renaissance, his technique was also unconventional for the time. Bosch worked quickly with gloopy blobs of thick paint to conjure up the fine details of a fish's eye or the spines on the back of a porcupine from a few brushstrokes. The liveliness of Bosch's technique is one of the qualities that makes his painting seem strangely modern.
The Garden of Earthly Delights reflects the new way of thinking about the world that the Renaissance ushered in - ideas about free will and morality that challenged the old religious order and which posed a question: perhaps heaven and hell are not places your soul might end up in, but states of being that are always inside you?
---
Matthew Collings concludes the series by looking at the invention of Renaissance painting.
The Baptism of Christ by Italian master Piero Della Francesca showed the household names of the High Renaissance how to use the big new trick of Renaissance painting - illusionism and perspective. Without him their achievements would have been impossible, but change came so rapidly in the Renaissance that the qualities that made Piero famous in his own time quickly went out of fashion.
The Baptism was bought for the National Gallery in 1861 and later Cezanne and Picasso saw him as the real deal: the authentic, honest Renaissance, a model for modern painting. Now he is so in tune with secular modern taste that a tourist trail links his work in the beautiful hills of Umbria, Tuscany, and a few galleries around the world who own a precious panel by him.
Collings follows his trail and hunts down the forensic detail in the highest-resolution images of paintings yet seen on television.
BBC2. 16-30 October 2010. 3 x 60 minutes on one disk.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Warsaw Ghetto: The Unfinished Film
The Warsaw Ghetto housed 440,000 Polish Jews and Roma during World War II. Typhus, starvation and random murders killed over 100,000 of the ghetto's residents even before the Nazis began the massive deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Yet the Nazis created a mysterious propaganda film that juxtaposed meticulously staged scenes of Jews enjoying a life of luxury in the ghetto with other, chilling images that required no staging at all.
After the war, filmmakers and museums - unaware of the deception - used images from the film as objective illustrations of life in the ghetto, which subsequently became engraved as historical truth.
With contributions from ghetto survivors and one of the German cameramen, Warsaw Ghetto: The Unfinished Film reveals how the Nazis used the ghetto as a film set, the inhabitants as actors and the decaying bodies as exhibits, and examines how far we can trust historic images.
More4. 30th October 2010. 120 minutes.
Yet the Nazis created a mysterious propaganda film that juxtaposed meticulously staged scenes of Jews enjoying a life of luxury in the ghetto with other, chilling images that required no staging at all.
After the war, filmmakers and museums - unaware of the deception - used images from the film as objective illustrations of life in the ghetto, which subsequently became engraved as historical truth.
With contributions from ghetto survivors and one of the German cameramen, Warsaw Ghetto: The Unfinished Film reveals how the Nazis used the ghetto as a film set, the inhabitants as actors and the decaying bodies as exhibits, and examines how far we can trust historic images.
More4. 30th October 2010. 120 minutes.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits
Art critic Laura Cumming takes a journey through more than five centuries of self-portraits and finds out how the greatest names in western art transformed themselves into their own masterpieces.
The film argues that self-portraits are a unique form of art - one that always reveals the truth of how artists saw themselves and how they wanted to be known to the world. Examining the works of key self-portraitists including Durer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Warhol, Laura traces the development of the genre, uncovering the strange and various ways artists have managed to get their inner and outer selves to match up.
Laura investigates the stories behind key self-portraits, interviews artists as they attempt a self-portrait, and shows how the history of the self-portrait is about more than how art and artists have changed - it also charts the evolution of the way we see ourselves and what it means to be human.
She also discusses Courbet with Julian Barnes, Rembrandt's theatricality with Simon Callow, and meets the contemporary artists Mark Wallinger and Patrick Hughes, observing the latter making his first ever self-portrait.
BBC4. 4th November 2010. 90 minutes
The film argues that self-portraits are a unique form of art - one that always reveals the truth of how artists saw themselves and how they wanted to be known to the world. Examining the works of key self-portraitists including Durer, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Warhol, Laura traces the development of the genre, uncovering the strange and various ways artists have managed to get their inner and outer selves to match up.
Laura investigates the stories behind key self-portraits, interviews artists as they attempt a self-portrait, and shows how the history of the self-portrait is about more than how art and artists have changed - it also charts the evolution of the way we see ourselves and what it means to be human.
She also discusses Courbet with Julian Barnes, Rembrandt's theatricality with Simon Callow, and meets the contemporary artists Mark Wallinger and Patrick Hughes, observing the latter making his first ever self-portrait.
BBC4. 4th November 2010. 90 minutes
Monday, 1 November 2010
Dispatches: Ready for a Riot
The death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in April 2009 and the images of police batons raining down on protestors have put the spotlight on the tactics police deploy during public demonstrations.
Dispatches has been given exclusive access to the Metropolitan Police to find out what training officers are given.
The programme looks at how the police are taught to judge the level of force required to suppress disorder, and examines controversial crowd control tactics like 'containment', which brings protestors face-to-face with heavily-protected and armed police officers.
Dispatches asks why, if the vast majority of protests pass off peacefully, police training still focuses on the worst-case scenario of riots and petrol bombs, and hears from critics of the current training who argue it is out of step with 21st century protest.
The programme examines the evolution of this training and asks whether the requirements of health and safety legislation have had an adverse effect on policing public order: whether the rules designed to protect the police from harm actually put them at greater risk.
And when Climate Camp returned to the capital in summer 2009, Dispatches was there to find out if lessons had been learnt from the events of G20.
Channel 4. 19th October 2009. 60 minutes
A Garden in Snowdonia
Bodnant Rising
The story of a year in the life of Bodnant Garden in North Wales. With visitor numbers in decline, those who live and work at the National Trust property are on a mission to transform this spectacular garden. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith and his manager Michael McLaren are spending two million pounds on a revamp, with the aim of creating one of the top ten gardens in the world.
Bodnant Blooming
Head Gardener Troy Scott Smith and his team give Bodnant a facelift. Supervisor Adam Salvin brings a beautiful Italianate terrace back to its former glory, Dave Larter shares his passion for giant lilies and the world famous Laburnum Arch is in full bloom.
Bodnant at Risk
Head gardener Troy Scott Smith struggles to preserve one of the largest collection of rhododendrons in the country. With many rare and ageing plants, and a growing threat from 'sudden oak disease', Bodnant faces some tough challenges.
Bodnant on Show
Ann Smith, the Visitors Services Manager, implements an ambitious programme of summer events to attract more visitors. Troy Scott Smith is concerned that his beautiful grounds could be ruined by crowds.
Bodnant Under Snow
The garden is under a carpet of snow and closed to the public. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith plans a winter garden to attract more visitors. A three-hundred-year-old oak tree is dying. A plague of moles wreaks havoc as the team prepares to open for the new season.
BBC2. 24 August-7 September 2009. 5 x 30 minutes on 2 disks.
The story of a year in the life of Bodnant Garden in North Wales. With visitor numbers in decline, those who live and work at the National Trust property are on a mission to transform this spectacular garden. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith and his manager Michael McLaren are spending two million pounds on a revamp, with the aim of creating one of the top ten gardens in the world.
Bodnant Blooming
Head Gardener Troy Scott Smith and his team give Bodnant a facelift. Supervisor Adam Salvin brings a beautiful Italianate terrace back to its former glory, Dave Larter shares his passion for giant lilies and the world famous Laburnum Arch is in full bloom.
Bodnant at Risk
Head gardener Troy Scott Smith struggles to preserve one of the largest collection of rhododendrons in the country. With many rare and ageing plants, and a growing threat from 'sudden oak disease', Bodnant faces some tough challenges.
Bodnant on Show
Ann Smith, the Visitors Services Manager, implements an ambitious programme of summer events to attract more visitors. Troy Scott Smith is concerned that his beautiful grounds could be ruined by crowds.
Bodnant Under Snow
The garden is under a carpet of snow and closed to the public. Head gardener Troy Scott Smith plans a winter garden to attract more visitors. A three-hundred-year-old oak tree is dying. A plague of moles wreaks havoc as the team prepares to open for the new season.
BBC2. 24 August-7 September 2009. 5 x 30 minutes on 2 disks.
Louis Theroux and The City Addicted to Crystal Meth
Central Valley, California, is home to some of the most impoverished rural towns in America, where crystal meth addiction is prolific. In Fresno, Louis finds a community ravaged by this cheap and highly addictive drug.
As he infiltrates the town, he experiences the reality of meth abuse, as addicts who are high (or 'tweaking', as it is known) invite him into their homes to see them take hit after hit of their favourite drug. Louis becomes surrounded by the madness of daily addiction and the meth-addled confusion which is breaking this community apart.
He sees its impact through the eyes of the local police, and meets Diane and Karl, a couple who have sustained their marriage despite a 25-year meth addiction and losing custody of their five children. He witnesses arrests of sons doing meth with their mothers, and family after family broken apart from generations of meth abuse.
At the Westcare residential centre, Louis sees the work being done to combat the destruction caused by the drug. Run by ex-addicts, it offers a six-month rehab programme. He witnesses the extraordinary challenges they face dealing with meth-addicted families - babies born already hooked, with mothers caring for them while attempting to kick their own habit too.
Addiction is laid bare as Louis seeks out the stories and the people behind the drug.
BBC2. 9th August 2009. 60 minutes
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