Sarah Koenig: “I’ve never been a missionary for true-crime podcasts”
The Serial creator on ten years of the podcast that changed the medium forever.
ByDocumentary
Hollywoodgate is a glimpse of the Taliban at work
This revelatory film follows two soldiers in Afghanistan during the country’s regime change.
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Did celebrity ruin David Beckham?
Netflix reveals a footballer betrayed by celebrity.
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Sport is just fodder for documentaries now
High-stakes “sportertainment” puts casual streamers and shareholders above fans and tradition.
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A baffling but brilliant ride through Birmingham’s surrealist scene
Stewart Lee’s Radio 4 documentary on the city’s artistic past is jarring, hard to follow and utterly engaging.
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Why the “golden age of the documentary” is a myth
More are being released than ever before – but the documentary has entered its corporate era.
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You won’t ever forget Channel 4’s Afghanistan documentary Evacuation
Give this revelatory series your time. Let it rip open your heart.
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A history of the world in circles
Radio 4’s In the Loop explores the secrets of things that are round – from particle accelerators to the 5,000-year-old…
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How the tabloid media turned on Anna Nicole Smith
Smith’s life, death and now – thanks to a new Netflix documentary – after-life was a spectacle.
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How Judy Blume became a lightning rod in the culture wars
The frank explorations of puberty and sexuality that made her books radical in the 1970s are newly controversial in the…
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GB News’s pipeline to Downing Street
Rishi Sunak’s plan to tackle “grooming gangs” closely follows a documentary on the topic.
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The rise of reality star documentaries
Former cast members from Love Island or Made in Chelsea have a new route to relevance – presenting “serious” factual…
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Netflix doesn’t understand why people watch porn
The documentary Moneyshot grapples with the adult industry’s biggest problems – but not those who consume its content.
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How the tabloids outed George Michael
A new Channel 4 doc explores the media’s glee at the singer’s arrest for “lewd acts” in 1998. But in…
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The exploitative history of Hollywood sex scenes
A new documentary explores the making of intimate nude scenes of the past – and future.
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The cheap trend of sensationalist docudramas
Colleen Rooney? Boris Johnson? Prince Andrew? All have gone through the pop culture scandal to prestige TV pipeline.
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The last bell foundry in Britain
This peek inside the John Taylor bell foundry is a ringing endorsement for BBC radio storytelling.
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The hypocrisy of Zara McDermott’s disordered eating documentary
The BBC can’t pretend a show hosted by a fitness influencer who posted restrictive meal plans on Instagram is a…
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The male, pale Haçienda myth
A new BBC documentary cements the dull cult of nostalgia around Manchester’s acid house scene and neglects the black and…
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What Sidney Poitier stood for
Burdened by the expectations of black people around the world, the Oscar-winning actor embodied grace even under fire.
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