Louis Theroux's BBC Two specials
In these first special programmes (2003), Louis Theroux returned to American themes, working at feature-length, this time with a more serious tone than in his earlier Weird Weekends work. For example, Louis and the Brothel takes a sympathetic look at the sex workers working at a legal brothel in Nevada whereas Under the Knife takes a more critical look at the world of plastic surgery. Other programmes cover a wide variety of topics including law and disorder and Nazis.
In March 2006, Theroux signed a deal with the BBC to produce ten films over the course of three years. In February 2009, a new contract came into force which guaranteed him another ten hour-long documentaries with the BBC.
Episodes
| No. | Title | Directed by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Louis and the Brothel" | Geoffrey O'Connor | 9 November 2003 | |
| Ex-prostitute Susan Austin and her ex-client and now husband, Lance Gilman, run America's newest legal brothel – The Wild Horse Ranch in Reno, Nevada. In a three-week sojourn Louis gets to know this remarkable couple and meets their customers. He also hears the stories of the working women. | ||||
| 2 | "Louis, Martin & Michael" | Will Yapp | 16 November 2003 | |
| After losing out to Martin Bashir for an opportunity to produce an official Michael Jackson documentary, Louis tries his best to obtain an interview with Michael, but cannot. In the process, Louis meets with Uri Geller and Michael's father Joe Jackson. | ||||
| 3 | "Louis and the Nazis" | Stuart Cabb | 21 December 2003 | |
| Louis travels to California to get to know some of the key personalities of the American neo-Nazi movement. | ||||
| 4 | "Louis Theroux: Gambling in Las Vegas" | Stuart Cabb | 4 February 2007 | |
| Louis heads for Vegas to reveal the world behind the myths of casino culture – the slot slaves, high rollers and casino men who keep this town in the middle of the desert green with money. | ||||
| 5 | "The Most Hated Family in America" | Geoffrey O'Connor | 1 April 2007 | |
| Louis gets to know the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas – whose members are nearly all from one family and are infamous for extreme homophobia and picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers. | ||||
| 6 | "Louis Theroux: Under the Knife" | Emma Cooper | 7 October 2007 | |
| In California, where you can be whatever and whoever you want at the flick of knife and a few thousand dollars, Louis attempts to get under the skin of extreme plastic surgery. | ||||
| 7 | "Louis Theroux: Behind Bars" | Stuart Cabb | 13 January 2008 | |
| Louis goes inside California's San Quentin – one of America's most notorious prisons – to meet serial murderers, gang members, at risk inmates and guards. | ||||
| 8 | "African Hunting Holiday" | Paddy Wivell | 6 April 2008 | |
| Louis journeys to Limpopo Province in South Africa to join the holidaymakers who flock there to hunt big game. | ||||
| 9 | "Law and Disorder in Philadelphia" | Emma Cooper | 30 November 2008 | |
| Louis joins Philadelphia's police department, patrolling an area that has over 400 homicides a year, drug dealers on every corner and where carrying a gun is part of everyday life. But during his time spent with the local cops, he sees a complex picture evolve. | ||||
| 10 | "Law and Disorder in Johannesburg" | Paddy Wivell | 7 December 2008 | |
| Louis Theroux travels to Johannesburg, where the residents find themselves increasingly besieged by crime as he looks at the issue of law and disorder. | ||||
| 11 | "A Place for Paedophiles" | Emma Cooper | 19 April 2009 | |
| Louis visits the Coalinga Mental Hospital in California, which houses more than 500 convicted child sex offenders. Spending time with those undergoing treatment, Louis wrestles with whether he can ever allow himself to believe men whose whole history is defined by deceit. | ||||
| 12 | "The City Addicted to Crystal Meth" | Geoffrey O'Connor | 9 August 2009 | |
| Louis examines how drug addiction has torn apart the city of Fresno in Central Valley, California. | ||||
| 13 | "America's Medicated Kids" | Danny Horan | 18 April 2010 | |
| Louis meets parents who have turned to medication to keep their children under control. | ||||
| 14 | "Law and Disorder in Lagos" | Jason Massot | 10 October 2010 | |
| Louis Theroux travels to Lagos, where the residents find themselves increasingly besieged by crime as he looks at the issue of law and disorder. | ||||
| 15 | "The Ultra Zionists" | Andy Wells | 3 February 2011 | |
| Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank. | ||||
| 16 | "America's Most Hated Family in Crisis" | Emma Cooper | 3 April 2011 | |
| Four years after his last visit, Louis returns to spend a week with the Westboro Baptist Church in the wake of several defections from the church. | ||||
| 17 | "Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail Part 1" | Emma Cooper | 22 May 2011 | |
| Louis Theroux spends time in one of the most notorious sections of Miami County Jail: the fifth and sixth floor of 'Main Jail', where many of the most volatile inmates are incarcerated. | ||||
| 18 | "Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail Part 2" | Emma Cooper | 29 May 2011 | |
| Louis Theroux goes deeper into the jail system and meets an inmate facing a possible death sentence. He also follows a group of younger inmates who have escaped prison by pleading guilty and agreeing to attend a four-month military style boot camp. | ||||
| 19 | "America's Most Dangerous Pets" | Jamie Pickup | 30 October 2011 | |
| Travelling to America's heartlands, Louis Theroux spends time with people who have private collections of tigers and chimpanzees. | ||||
| 20 | "Extreme Love: Autism" | Jamie Pickup | 19 April 2012 | |
| Louis travels to one of the most innovative autism schools of its kind – the DLC Warren in New Jersey – opened in 2007 at a cost of $54 million. There he finds out how specialised intervention can help both the pupils and the families that care for them. | ||||
| 21 | "Extreme Love: Dementia" | Dan Child | 26 April 2012 | |
| As one of the big retirement destinations for middle class Americans, Phoenix, Arizona has also become a capital of dementia care. Louis visits the city to spend time in state-of-the-art care home Beatitudes and with home-based carers, whose love is tested by a condition that steadily erodes the personality and character of their partners. | ||||
| 22 | "Twilight of the Porn Stars" | Jason Massot | 10 June 2012 | |
| Fifteen years after documenting the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles, Louis Theroux returns to find a business struggling with the deluge of free porn online. He also visits people he saw on his first documentary to see how their lives have progressed. | ||||
| 23 | "LA Stories: City of Dogs" | Rob Farquhar | 23 March 2014 | |
| Louis enters the bizarre world of LA’s dogs, meeting the characters whose lives revolve around the city’s huge canine population. | ||||
| 24 | "LA Stories: Edge of Life" | Jamie Pickup | 30 March 2014 | |
| Louis heads to West Hollywood’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to experience the American way of death. | ||||
| 25 | "LA Stories: Among the Sex Offenders" | Rob Farquhar | 6 April 2014 | |
| Louis looks at how California deals with sex offenders after release from prison. | ||||
| 26 | "By Reason of Insanity Part 1" | Jamie Pickup | 22 March 2015 | |
| Louis goes to Ohio and researches the facilities where those found not guilty by insanity are evaluated and treated. | ||||
| 27 | "By Reason of Insanity Part 2" | Jamie Pickup | 29 March 2015 | |
| Louis continues his investigation, exploring the boundaries between insanity and criminality. | ||||
| 28 | "Transgender Kids" | Tom Barrow | 5 April 2015 | |
| Louis travels to San Francisco where medical professionals are helping children with gender dysphoria transition from boy to girl or girl to boy. | ||||
| 29 | "Drinking to Oblivion" | Tom Barrow | 24 April 2016 | |
| Louis spends time with patients of alcoholism at King's College Hospital. | ||||
| 30 | "A Different Brain" | Jamie Pickup | 15 May 2016 | |
| Louis takes a look at the issues that some of the estimated one million people in the UK living with the long-term effects of a brain injury have to deal with. | ||||
| 31 | "Savile" | Arthur Cary | 2 October 2016 | |
| In light of the unmasking of Jimmy Savile as a predatory sex offender, and 16 years after his documentary When Louis Met... Jimmy, Louis Theroux sets out to understand how a man who was at the centre of British entertainment and charitable fundraising for decades was able to get away with a long litany of crimes. | ||||
| 32 | "Dark States: Heroin Town" | Dan Child | 8 October 2017 | |
| Louis investigates how the USA's crackdown on over-prescribing drugs has led to an epidemic of heroin abuse. | ||||
| 33 | "Dark States: Trafficking Sex" | Jamie Pickup | 15 October 2017 | |
| Louis travels to Houston, Texas which is considered the hub of sexual exploitation and trafficking in the US, where he spends time with the prostitutes, pimps and law enforcement within the city. | ||||
| 34 | "Dark States: Murder in Milwaukee" | Jason Massot | 22 October 2017 | |
| Louis follows the racial tensions sparked by two police shootings in the city of Milwaukee, one of the most impoverished in the United States. | ||||
| 35 | "Talking to Anorexia" | Ellena Wood | 29 October 2017 | |
| Louis spends time with people suffering from eating disorders and visits them at St Ann’s Hospital and Vincent Square Clinic. | ||||
| 36 | "Altered States: Love Without Limits" | Arron Fellows | 4 November 2018 | |
| Louis embeds himself with families living a polygamous lifestyle, discovering that for many, more partners means more love and more happiness, but for others, multiple relationships have led to jealousy, upset and broken hearts. | ||||
| 37 | "Altered States: Choosing Death" | Arron Fellows | 18 November 2018 | |
| Louis heads to California, one of the six states in the US that now offer the terminally ill the option of ending their lives. He is invited into the family homes of those who want to end their own lives but discovers that choosing the right time to die is not such a simple decision. | ||||
| 38 | "Altered States: Take My Baby" | Wesley Pollitt | 25 November 2018 | |
| Louis spends time with birth mothers preparing to hand over their own flesh and blood, uncovering stories of the poverty, addiction and abuse that led to their situations. | ||||
| 39 | "The Night in Question" | Lottie Gammon | 4 March 2019 | |
| Louis heads to American college campuses and comes face-to-face with students whose universities are accusing them of sexual assault. | ||||
| 40 | "Mothers on the Edge" | Mark Casebow | 12 May 2019 | |
| Louis Theroux visits specialist psychiatric units which treat mothers experiencing serious postpartum depression whilst allowing them to live alongside their babies. | ||||
| 41 | "Surviving America's Most Hated Family" | Geoffrey O'Connor | 14 July 2019 | |
| Louis returns to visit the controversial Westboro Baptist Church, investigating what effect the death of its founder has had on its members and those who have since left. | ||||
| 42 | "Selling Sex" | Joshua Baker | 12 January 2020 | |
| Louis meets the women legally providing sexual services to paying clients. | ||||
| 43 | "Life on the Edge Part 1: Beyond Belief" | Tom Barrow | 6 September 2020 | |
| In the first episode of his four-part career retrospective series "Life on the Edge", Louis looks back at his earliest documentaries and explores how some people’s most fervent beliefs can bring them into conflict with mainstream society. | ||||
| 44 | "Life on the Edge Part 2: The Dark Side of Pleasure" | Tom Barrow | 13 September 2020 | |
| In the second episode of "Life on the Edge", Louis explores how America has managed to take our darkest desires, commodify them and turn them into a saleable product. | ||||
| 45 | "Life on the Edge Part 3: Law and Disorder" | Tom Barrow | 20 September 2020 | |
| In the third episode of "Life on the Edge", Louis reflects on the criminal justice system in the USA, which has more prisoners than any other country in the world. | ||||
| 46 | "Life on the Edge Part 4: Family Ties" | Tom Barrow | 27 September 2020 | |
| In the final episode of "Life on the Edge", Louis examines how the greatest source of love in our lives – our families – can often be the cause of our deepest pain. | ||||
| 47 | "Shooting Joe Exotic" | Jack Rampling | 5 April 2021 | |
| A decade after Louis first met Joe Exotic in his previous documentary America's Most Dangerous Pets he revisits unseen footage thereof and interviews Carole Baskin, as well as Joe's friends and family to uncover how he used his considerable charm and deception to assemble a vast menagerie of animals and humans. | ||||
| 48 | "Forbidden America: Extreme and Online" | Daniel Dewsbury | 13 February 2022 | |
| Louis 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. | ||||
| 49 | "Forbidden America: Rap's New Frontline" | Daniel Dewsbury | 20 February 2022 | |
| Louis immerses himself in Florida’s multimillion-dollar rap scene – as notorious for its controversy as its creativity. | ||||
| 50 | "Forbidden America: Porn's MeToo" | Rachel Lob-Levyt | 27 February 2022 | |
| Louis heads to Los Angeles as the world of adult entertainment grapples with its own wave of #MeToo. | ||||
DVD releases
- Louis Theroux: The Strange & The Dangerous - released 19 January 2009[1]
- Gambling in Las Vegas
- The Most Hated Family in America
- Under the Knife
- Behind Bars
- African Hunting Holiday
- Special Feature: The Weird World of Louis Theroux
- Features 'In-Vision' commentaries with contributions from Norman Pace – Gambling in Las Vegas, Peter Tatchell – The Most Hated Family in America, Cindy Jackson – Under the Knife, Paul Taylor – Behind Bars and Terry Nutkins – African Hunting Holiday.
- Louis Theroux: Law & Disorder - released 14 September 2009[2]
- Louis Theroux: The Odd, the Bad and the Godly - released 15 August 2011[3]
References
- "Louis Theroux: The Strange and the Dangerous [DVD]". Amazon UK. 19 January 2009. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "Louis Theroux - Law and Disorder Collection [DVD]". Amazon UK. 14 September 2009. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "Louis Theroux - The Odd, the Bad and the Godly [DVD]". Amazon UK. 15 August 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
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