Victoria Wood was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director.
Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series forming the Life collection, a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
Louis Sebastian Theroux is a British-American documentarian, journalist, broadcaster, and author. He has received three British Academy Television Awards and a Royal Television Society Television Award.
Michael David Wood, is an English historian and broadcaster. He has presented numerous well-known television documentary series from the late 1970s to the present day. Wood has also written a number of books on English history, including In Search of the Dark Ages, The Domesday Quest, The Story of England, and In Search of Shakespeare. He was appointed Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester in 2013.
Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile was an English DJ and television and radio personality who hosted BBC shows including Top of the Pops and Jim'll Fix It. During his lifetime, he was well known in the United Kingdom for his eccentric image and his charitable work. After his death, hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse made against him were investigated, leading the police to conclude that he had been a predatory sex offender and possibly one of Britain's most prolific. There had been allegations during his lifetime, but they were dismissed and accusers ignored or disbelieved. Savile took legal action against some accusers.
Adrian Anthony Lester is an English actor, director and writer. He is the recipient of a Laurence Olivier Award, an Evening Standard Theatre Award and a Critics' Circle Theatre Award for his work on the London stage.
Marcel Raymond Theroux is a British-American novelist and broadcaster. He wrote A Stranger in The Earth and The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes: A Paper Chase, for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2002. His third novel, A Blow to the Heart, was published by Faber in 2006. His fourth, Far North, was published in June 2009. His fifth, Strange Bodies, was published in May 2013. He has also worked in television news in New York City and in Boston.
Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends is a television documentary series, in which Louis Theroux gives viewers the chance to get brief glimpses into the worlds of individuals and groups that they would not normally come into contact with or experience up close. In most cases this means interviewing people with extreme beliefs of some kind, or just generally belonging to subcultures not known to exist by most or just frowned upon. It was first shown in the United Kingdom on BBC2. In 2001, Theroux was awarded the Richard Dimbleby Award as well as the Best Presenter BAFTA for his work on the series.
The Most Hated Family in America is a 2007 BBC documentary film written and presented by Louis Theroux about the family at the core of the Westboro Baptist Church. The organization was led by Fred Phelps and located in Topeka, Kansas. Westboro Baptist Church members believe that the United States government is immoral due to its tolerance of homosexuality; in addition, they protest at funerals of U.S. military killed in action with signs that display text such as "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers". With a BBC film crew, Theroux travelled to Kansas to spend time with members of the church and interview its leadership. Theroux interviews church leadership including Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps-Roper.
Tom Croft is a retired rugby union player. He played 173 games for Leicester Tigers between 2005–17 winning four Premiership Rugby titles, played 40 times for England between 2008–2015, was part of the squad for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and the British & Irish Lions in 2009 to South Africa and 2013 to Australia. His career was somewhat plagued with a variety of minor and serious injuries.
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.
Louis Theroux: Behind Bars is a television documentary written and presented by Louis Theroux about one of America's most notorious prisons, San Quentin. There, he meets and speaks to serial murderers, gang members, at-risk inmates and guards. The film was produced and directed by Stuart Cabb, and was first aired on BBC Two on 13 January 2008.
Amanda Jane Vickery is an English historian, writer, radio and television presenter, and professor of early modern history at Queen Mary, University of London.
The City Addicted to Crystal Meth is a British documentary by Louis Theroux. It was televised on 9 August 2009. Theroux filmed his documentary in Fresno, California which has one of the highest number of crystal meth users in the United States.
America's Medicated Kids is a British documentary that was televised on 18 April 2010. The Louis Theroux documentary ran for 60 minutes. The documentary follows Theroux as he travels to one of America's leading children's psychiatric treatment centres, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and investigates the effects of putting children diagnosed with mental health disorders on prescription medication and the impact that medicating the child has on the family group.
Law and Disorder in Johannesburg is a Louis Theroux documentary about the crime and private security situation in Johannesburg, South Africa. Theroux travels with heavily armed private security contractors who fill a security vacuum left by the government's inability to provide adequate security via normal means, such as policing. Theroux also meets with local people at the Black township level, who practice vigilantism against suspected criminals.
African Hunting Holiday is a 2008 British documentary by Louis Theroux.
America's Most Hated Family in Crisis is a 2011 BBC documentary film presented and written by Louis Theroux, who revisits the family at the core of the Westboro Baptist Church. It is a follow up to 2007's The Most Hated Family in America, also written and presented by Theroux. In 2019, Theroux made another follow-up, Surviving America's Most Hated Family, completing a trilogy of documentaries based on the church.
It emerged in late 2012 that Jimmy Savile, an English media personality who had died the previous year, sexually abused hundreds of people throughout his life, most of them children but some as old as 75, and most of them female. He had been well known in the United Kingdom for his eccentric image and was generally respected for his charitable work, which associated him with the British monarchy and other individuals of personal power.
Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story is a two-part Netflix documentary series released on April 6, 2022. It covers the life and career of the British television personality Jimmy Savile, his history of committing sexual abuse, and the scandal that occurred after his death in 2011, when numerous complaints were raised about his behaviour.
