Americans fall for it, but let’s see Louis play the cute Brit in Glasgow

There’s a simple reason why Louis Theroux’s schtick, his deadpan innocence, works so well in America. They think he’s a cute Brit.

riding in the back of a car in Dark States (BBC2), driven by a grinning heroin addict called Petty Betty, he asked her: ‘What should I call you — Petty, or Betty, or something else?’ she thought that was sweetly funny.

Let’s see him try the same line on Dogbreath Deirdre from Glasgow and count how many seconds the interview lasts.

This three-part series, made by the BBC studios Documentary Unit and thus funded by the Beeb’s licence payers, explores the underbelly of U.s. society.

It can be fascinating, but it’s undeniably remote. The first show, heroin Town, focused on drug addiction in the Appalachian community of huntington, West Virginia: why can’t Louis confront the synthetic ‘spice’ epidemic in Liverpool or Cardiff instead?

There’s a counter-argument, of course. America is so often five or ten years ahead of Britain in its cultural crises, from gang warfare to rampant obesity. God forbid that huntington is a glimpse of the future for england’s rural towns.

A quarter of the adults in this burg, 50 miles from Charleston, are opiate addicts. Most turned to heroin after getting hooked on prescription painkillers which used to be handed out like smarties by doctors. When the law changed, more than 10,000 addicts went looking for their fix in a needle.

At a visit to a counselling charity in east London last month, Prince William wondered aloud whether class A drugs should be made legal. If he really wants to know what would happen, Louis’s interviewees had the answers.

The saddest of them was Cotilia, a woman in her 20s who lived like a slave to her drug-dealer boyfriend. he beat her, breaking her nose and fracturing her spine, but she kept crawling back to him for heroin — even stealing from her elderly dad, who plainly would have given his life to wean her off the addiction.

Theroux coaxed her story out in a series of visits, winning her trust by showing as little emotion as a robot. In his precise questions he never ‘umms’ or ‘errs’. his flat voice masks any reaction, and he doesn’t attempt to befriend his subjects. It’s very different from his original ‘Weird Weekends’ technique, when he played for laughs as he cosied up to people such as Jimmy savile.

Jessica raine’s military wife Alison, stuck on a dusty Army base in 40c heat on The Last Post (BBC1), is deadening her emotions and reactions with gin. she needs a bottle or so every 20 minutes to cope with the ludicrous melodrama of Peter Moffat’s story.

This week, an American female war reporter turned up to photograph a secret mission by special Forces. she missed most of it: the intrepid brunette was too busy purring at the men as she rubbed suncream into their shoulders.

All the sAs troops were wiped out by a handful of surly Arab terrorists, mostly because they tended to stand around having leisurely chats while under fire. It does make you wonder what they are teaching in hereford.

Fiction doesn’t have to reflect combat with total accuracy, of course, but none of the cast even looks or moves like a soldier. When they walk, they’re never in step. They slouch and move lazily. Funnily enough, they look very like actors.

There are strong performances from Chris reilly and Ben Miles, though. The Last Post is rot, but it’s not utter rot.