I've been asked if I'd like to 
 talk about a few documentaries
that are in the BBC archives 
 that have meant something to me.
I've had a look at what's available,
and I've selected 
 some of my favourites,
and I'm going to talk about them 
 and talk about how
they resonated with me, and in some 
 cases how they influenced me.
So, without further ado - 
 here they are.
Philip and His Seven Wives 
 is a documentary that
looks at the unconventional 
 religious family,
in which the pater familias 
 is this guy Philip,
who believes based on his reading 
 of the Bible that he is some
sort of Jewish prophet, and entitled
 to have seven wives, which is
kind of, I guess, what some slightly
 wacky religious people believe.
The surprising thing in a way is 
 that he's managed to convince
seven women to be his wives.
Thank you very much.
I love documentaries that 
 are about weird religious behaviour,
but they're also subjects 
 that are about, kind of,
unconventional sexual behaviour, 
 and this has both of those,
and is a very intimate look 
 inside how that works and what's
driving him and what's driving 
 the women who are involved with him.
And there's something about it 
 being in the UK, in a sort of
more or less recognisable British 
 landscape, that gives it more power.
You know, we're used to seeing, 
 I'm used to seeing,
polygamist Mormons in Utah.
Something about seeing it 
 in East Sussex, you know,
close to where my mum lives, I'm not
 sure why my mind went to that,
I don't think she's in danger 
 of being recruited by Philip,
but that adds another twist to it.
Hello, riders! Good morning!
And he's a rather appealing figure,
and he's got a sort of surface 
 plausibility.
And he's quite charming, and you can
 see why he might be attractive.
And at the same time 
 it's totally bizarre.
Basically I had a month 
 of visitation. Right.
And in that month of visitation, 
 God told me I was a king.
And, er... 
 BABY CRIES
I mean, it's not like a king, 
 like I'm, you know, Prince Philip
or something.
King Tut. King Toot. 
 King Tit. No, it was, erm...
A spiritual king, OK? OK. 
 A spiritual king. To put it...
It's not only spiritual, 
 but it is at the moment
only spiritual. Right. And... 
 Do you want more...?
God revealed to me that 
 I am in the Scriptures,
that the Scriptures actually 
 speak about me.
HIS SISTER LAUGHS
They're having a kind of 
 normal conversation,
and you can see his sister's 
 somewhat taken by surprise.
I think she knows that 
 he's made various prophecies
or supernatural claims for himself.
But she hadn't realised 
 he'd gone quite that far,
so that's one that stayed with me.
Mr Mosley, you have been charged 
 with aggravated murder,
aggravated robbery, and several 
 other charges in relation to
the murder of Justin Back. 
 Is that correct? Yes, sir.
If you've seen any Life and Death 
 Rows, I don't know of any bad ones,
all the ones I've seen have been 
 really compelling and powerful.
This one I thought stood out, 
 it's a particularly strong one,
and I think partly it's to do with 
 the age of the perpetrators.
It's a pair of very young men.
And also the seeming motivelessness
and senselessness of the crime.
For a small amount of money,
these two young men appear to have 
 decided to murder this third guy.
With any film involving 
 an awful crime,
the emotions of the victims and 
 the victims' families are powerful
obviously, but understandable,
and so as a result 
 I find myself more curious
to hear from the perpetrators 
 and their family members.
Austin's not generally one to 
 let his emotions hang on his sleeve,
so if someone's insulting him 
 or attacking him
he tends to appear emotionless.
That's probably partially my fault.
I've taught my kids that 
 letting your emotions
react for you 
 generally doesn't work out well.
You don't know 
 what your kids are doing.
I guess I didn't know 
 he was in drugs.
I didn't know he was depressed.
There was a point in time where he 
 was depressed. And I found that out.
I suppose there's an instinct 
 to apportion blame to the mother
in a way, you know, 
 perhaps unfairly, and you think,
"Well, did you do something wrong
"in as much as your child 
 committed a murder?"
And then also commiserate, 
 you know,
for something that 
 they've gone through
which is not directly 
 of their doing.
I still can't believe it. I know it 
 happened. I don't believe it.
You think about it every day.
And it plays in your head every day,
 drives you crazy.
You know, in my own documentaries, 
 I've been drawn more to perpetrators
than victims.
You know, there is a school 
 of documentary-making that is
victim-focused, if you like, 
 which is totally appropriate
and right, but I don't think 
 it should be exclusively,
you know, the domain of 
 where all documentaries take place.
I find myself more drawn to 
 trying to understand
the motives behind 
 why these things take place.
The next one is Exposed: Magicians, 
 Psychics and Frauds.
Good evening.
My name is The Great Randall. 
 I'm a liar, a cheat and a charlatan.
I will blatantly lie to you,
but for purposes of entertainment 
 only of course.
And those lies may not be 
 discernible from the truth.
Randi was someone who'd 
 started out as both a magician
and a kind of con artist.
Well, the thought 
 naturally occurred to me
that I could base a good deal of 
 my life on Harry Houdini
and his adventures, perhaps do 
 some of the things that he had done,
and perhaps even improve on them.
Open sesame, try that. Open sesame.
Oh! Oh! The door's opening.
DRUM ROLL
I wanted to break his records,
I wanted to stay in a sealed 
 metal coffin longer than he did,
get out of a straitjacket 
 faster than he did, out of chains,
out of leg irons and handcuffs.
I said, "If a man could make it, 
 I could break it."
He had a conversion moment
when he decided to put his talents 
 towards exposing deceptive
religious figures, preachers 
 who purported to do miracles,
psychics who purported to have 
 supernatural abilities,
and that became his life's work.
Are you ready for God 
 to burn that cancer out?
A man like Reverend Peter Popoff 
 was a very dangerous man.
My estimation - he was a real 
 scoundrel, because he was taking
people's faith and their religion, 
 he was taking away their security.
In many cases, 
 he was harming them physically,
because he was convincing them 
 that they
didn't have to go to doctors any 
 more, that Jesus had healed them.
I'm interested in fakery, 
 in quackery, and also this question
which is at the heart of 
 faith healing in general,
which is, "Is false hope 
 better than no hope at all?"
But this documentary, 
 it's a look at how Randi works,
a recap of 
 some of his greatest hits,
and also a portrait of this complex 
 figure who has his own secret,
as it becomes clear 
 in the course of the film.
In bed seven, we've got Mr Richard 
 Rudd, 43-year-old gentleman.
A motorcyclist who hit a car 
 with quite high speed.
Found six metres away from 
 his motorbike.
He was paraplegic at the scene, 
 but we realised that he's,
A, not waking up properly and, B, 
 not moving his arms any more.
So, there's some discussion going 
 on with the family at the moment,
whether we should 
 withdraw treatment.
Between Life and Death is 
 a documentary by Nick Holt.
It's terrific in as much as 
 it involves, you know,
life and death, the biggest 
 decisions about what we should
expect from people who've been 
 through something cataclysmic.
The family tragedies 
 that touch so many people
and which, you know, are so unfair 
 on one level and at the same time
part of just daily experience 
 of many, many people.
What frightens me is that 
 you're going to say, "Yes, there's
"something here, something there," 
 and just keep going, going, going.
Cos I know you can keep him alive, 
 you know, but...
It's not so much that, 
 it's being absolutely certain that
we have looked for 
 absolutely everything.
You're already certain that 
 he's not going to get his arms
and his hands back. No. 
 We can say that for certain.
So, to me that means that there's 
 no quality of life. Well...
It's just got a wonderful 
 opening sequence in which
during a, sort of, 
 routine series of checks with
some of the patients, 
 one of them responds unexpectedly,
someone whom one presumes they're 
 beginning to be sceptical of him
showing any signs of recovery.
Richard, can you look to this side 
 for me?
And over to this side now.
Good man. OK.
It just enlightened me 
 in as much as I thought, well,
the small dramas of the recovery 
 and the small dramas
that take place in a hospital 
 can be really powerful and dramatic.
We need to get a system going
so we know what you're doing 
 and what you want.
If you can hear me 
 look to the right.
That's uphill.
That's right, that's right.
Is that what you meant?
All right. Now, 
 you look to your left.
I'm not sure, Richie.
Look to your left.
I'm not sure. 
 No, it's difficult, isn't it?
It was an influence on me in as much
 as I'd thought, before seeing it,
very idly, that perhaps there was
something in the world of 
 brain injury that I could do.
It gave me the confidence 
 to do a story
I later did that was called 
 The Edge of Life, about people with
life-threatening conditions 
 at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA.
That was partly influenced by 
 Nick Holt's film.
The next film's called Mini, 
 and it was directed by Franc Roddam.
The main character, Mini, 
 is in an institution.
Did it all burn down, 
 this church? Half of it did.
Half of it did? Yeah.
Were you disappointed? Mm-hmm.
Would you have liked it 
 all to have done? Mm-hmm.
You just are on this journey with 
 him, getting to know and like him.
And I don't want to sort of spoil 
 the story development,
but it's carefully crafted 
 in such a way that there's
a sort of mounting sense of impact,
as you grow to like this boy 
 and at the same time as his future
seems sort of more 
 and more doubtful.
You know what, you didn't like 
 that school you were in.
Had you ever thought of burning it?
No. No?
Or the headmistress? 
 Too many kids in there.
You wouldn't like to do it 
 where there were people? No.
Are you careful about that?
I don't, I don't want to get, 
 you know, involved in murder. No.
I mean, if I did it would just have 
 been murder, wouldn't it?
There's a bit where
Mini's recounting how 
 he came to burn down a house.
And there was a whole box of matches
 on the mantelpiece.
I says, "Aye, I'll have them."
So, you know, this cupboard, 
 I just walked in
and it was full of papers, so I 
 says, "This is too much temptation."
I wasn't meaning to burn 
 the house down.
I says, "This is too much 
 temptation.
"It's got to happen," you know, 
 it goes in my mind
and I can't get rid of it, 
 so I says, "All right, I'll do it."
Then I lit the matches and... 
 HE MIMICS EXPLOSION
All the flames and that went,
and all the blankets 
 and the flames coming all over.
It's one of those sort of moments 
 that, I don't know why,
it's cos of the way he says it, 
 as though it was self-evident that
anyone finding a box of matches,
that of course 
 you would burn it down.
I am always interested in 
 behaviour that is obviously
self-destructive, criminal,
especially when the person involved,
 the perpetrator,
seems to have likeable, 
 positive qualities, intelligence
and creativity and quirkiness,
all of which Mini, 
 this 11-year-old, has in abundance.
And one of the things that 
 stays with me is that Franc Roddam,
the director, 
 stayed in touch with Mini,
and I don't know if 
 they became friends as such,
but they certainly continued 
 to have a kind of relationship,
a friendly relationship.
And, you know, for those of us 
 who work in documentaries,
especially when you get close to 
 someone who's a contributor
who feels quite special, 
 there's always this, well,
there's an urge to stay in touch and
 to kind of keep up with the people,
and then sometimes it's not 
 always possible, and you find
yourself wondering what became 
 of people who you film with.
Fourteen Days In May,
it's just one of those ones that 
 always comes up as a great doc.
FROM TV: A death row inmate 
 at Parchman
is scheduled to die in the 
 gas chamber in less than two weeks.
Edward Earl Johnson was convicted of
the 1979 shooting death of 
 Walnut Grove Marshal JT Trest.
Johnson's attorneys and the 
 American Civil Liberties Union say
they've got a strategy to save 
 the inmate from execution on 20 May.
Many documentaries that are terrific
 come and go, but this one is
one that I think most people 
 involved in documentaries
will have seen and would agree
that it's a powerful 
 and important piece of storytelling.
It follows a young man 
 who is in a prison in Mississippi,
convicted of a rape and murder.
The funny thing is 
 I think about a future.
Now, that may seem kind of crazy.
What future could I possibly have,
knowing that I might supposedly 
 be executed in the next two weeks?
And what becomes increasingly clear 
 in the course of the film is that
it's highly likely that the young 
 man didn't actually do the crimes.
You know, there's 
 a great deal of doubt.
So, they asked me would I be 
 willing to take a lie detector test?
So, like, I told them, you know, 
 "I ain't did nothing.
"Yeah, I'd take it." So I, freely...
..you know, gave them permission, 
 yeah, I'd take a lie detector test.
So that means they had to 
 take me to Jackson.
On the way to Jackson, they pull 
 over, they told me, "you're going
"to tell us something, what we want 
 to hear, or you ain't going home."
They said, "Nigger, all we have to 
 say is that you jumped
"out of the car and ran."
I didn't know, then, 
 I didn't know what to think.
Most of the film is told through 
 interview and actuality,
and you don't get a sense of 
 who's behind the camera.
But one of the striking scenes 
 in the film is when he's off to
be executed, and they break the 
 form, the fourth wall, if you like.
We would like to leave, to leave you
 with the people here, OK?
OK.
I think it's time for us to go.
I want to say, 
 we want to say goodbye to you.
You know, I believe that was totally
 motivated by an appropriate
emotional response as a film-maker.
And at the same time, it becomes 
 a very powerful storytelling device.
You have a sense as a viewer that 
 something so important has happened
that normal rules 
 have gone out the window.
You know, rules are 
 made to be broken,
if you like, that it's very 
 important to establish your grammar
and have a way of telling a story, 
 and to not be self-indulgent,
but there comes a time when 
 you expand the frame,
and to see, you know, if a monkey 
 jumps up and grabs the boom,
you know, the normal rule of 
 not showing the boom...
It goes out the window, you know,
because actually it's 
 motivated by the storytelling.
And in that one, 
 the stakes are so high, you know,
it's actually a guy sending, it's a
guy saying his last goodbye to 
 someone who's about to be killed.
