We’ve picked documentarian Louis Theroux’s must-see shows: from survivalists and porn performers to religious groups and UFO believers.
Louis Theroux is one of Britain’s best-known and most-loved documentary makers. He started out in America presenting segments on Michael Moore’s TV Nation series.
In the late 1990s he rose to prominence in Britain with his first Weird Weekends series on BBC2. In these he embedded himself in communities and sub-cultures — usually in America — rarely seen on television. Theroux shed light on survivalists and porn performers, religious groups and UFO believers, with his unassuming and personal style of interviewing.
Since those early days, he has made more than 50 documentaries for the BBC, as well as one feature film. In the infamous When Louis Met … Jimmy, the notorious sex offender Jimmy Savile was his subject before the revelations about him became public.
Theroux’s documentaries are usually focused on unusual, fringe and controversial subjects, including crime and punishment and the world of celebrity, and most are available free on iPlayer. Here our critics have chosen some of the very best for you to go back and watch again.
10. The City Addicted to Crystal Meth
Don’t be fooled, Theroux is a journalist at heart, and his investigative skills are evident in this episode in which he explores the reality of meth abuse. His focus is on Fresno, a Californian city that is the crystal meth capital of the United States. It’s all terribly heartbreaking and bleak — a trail of broken people and relationships. This is a forensic look at a national tragedy covering everything from rehab programmes to meth-addicted families.
9. My Scientology Movie
Theroux finally turned his attention to the Church of Scientology in a documentary that is absolutely fascinating — and a tremendous failure. Documentaries hinge on access to complex and intriguing people, archives, places and groups. This film is about what happens when you don’t have that, when your subject turns its back on you. Faced with a stonewall from the cultish church, Theroux decided to use actors to recreate the insider practices described by the whistleblower Marty Rathbun. It’s a film in which Theroux meets his match.
8. Extreme Love: Dementia
One of the most moving films that Theroux has made, this is the second of two programmes on “extreme love”, the first being focused on autism. In this show Theroux travels to Phoenix, Arizona to spend time with people suffering with dementia, their families and carers — and attempts to understand how people live, love and communicate in a world that is encroached upon by mental shadows.
7. Altered States: Love Without Limits
In this intriguing episode, Theroux heads to free-thinking Portland to investigate polyamory. This is Theroux at his best, lifting the lid on something often considered taboo or weird. He meets couples, and “throuples”, and explores the positives and negatives of these unconventional arrangements. It’s certainly eye-opening.
6. Forbidden America: Extreme and Online
It was inevitable that Theroux would take on right-wing extremists and trolls in the age of Trump. But this film is about how those people can reach admirers across the world via the internet. Theroux succeeds at peeping beneath, if not ripping off, the trolls’ masks to reveal who they really are. All of them, to varying degrees, believe that the America of old has been lost.
5. A Place for Paedophiles
This is the sort of show that you can’t stop thinking about days and even weeks later. Theroux visits the Coalinga State Hospital in California, built to contain and treat serious sex offenders. Only 13 ex-offenders have been released in the past ten years. The vast majority of patients will spend the rest of their lives there. What intrigues Theroux the most is how normal, plausible and often likeable the inmates are –– but those are exactly the characteristics that allowed them to groom their victims in the first place. It’s a shocking yet captivating watch.
4. Weird Weekends: Looking for Love
Theroux’s seminal Weird Weekends series has many excellent episodes to choose from including Wrestling, Self-Fulfilment and Swingers. But it is this episode from the third and final series that stands out. Theroux travels to Bangkok to meet British men using introduction agencies to find a Thai wife. He meets fascinating people who are in search of love, selling the dream of happiness or looking to move away from Thailand with a British husband. As with the best Theroux films, the film asks probing questions about the motivations of all of its subjects and leaves viewers to make up their own minds.
3. Louis And The Nazis
Theroux once again juxtaposes his mild-mannered interviewing style with extremist views as he meets the White Aryan Resistance in California. Among the people he meets is a mother who is teaching her 11-year old twin daughters to sing racist pop songs. This eye-opening episode is a classic example of Theroux’s ability to find humanity in some very dark places.
2. Savile
Despite his best efforts, Theroux struggled to crack Jimmy Savile. In When Louis Met … Jimmy, the journalist came close, asking him about paedophilia, but perhaps didn’t push his questioning far enough. He has since confessed that he found Savile odd rather than alarming. Sixteen years later, after Savile’s sexual abuse had come to light, Theroux spoke to some of his victims. Revealing, brave and insightful, this one-off special is far more illuminating than recent Savile drama The Reckoning.
1. The Most Hated Family in America
Theroux meets the Phelps family at the centre of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, who believe that the American government is immoral for its tolerance of homosexuality. One of the ways they get their message across is to protest at military funerals of US servicemen killed in action with provocative placards and messages. A masterclass in Theroux’s subtle, non-judgmental approach, this fascinating film takes the viewer deep into a troubling world of family, politics and religion.