Documentaries
Louis Theroux: Savile (Prime, Sunday, 9.35pm) is a sad and rather brave investigation by Theroux, who tries to understand how he, and everyone else, missed the truth about serial abuser
Jimmy Savile.
Theroux made a documentary with Savile in 2000, but despite Savile’s string vest, cigar and shell suit – and his creepy behaviour – never picked him for
a child molester. Well, who did? Nevertheless, Theroux is haunted that he was duped and revisits that encounter as well as meeting some of Savile’s victims (warning: it’s awful) and his secretary of 30 years, who is still in denial.
German film-maker Lilian Franck investigates the World Health Organisation in TrustWHO (TVNZ OnDemand, Tuesday) and finds a disturbing level of interference by corporates with vested interests.
It’s not the picture we have of an organisation that should be above influence as it works for global health. However,
Franck ( Pianomania) interviews WHO officials and former employees and uncovers what she believes are ties to the tobacco, pharmaceutical and nuclear industries.
In September, Michael Palin told us that, despite being “very, very, very difficult to unravel”, he still believes his new series North Korea: Michael Palin’s Journey (National Geographic, Sky 072, Tuesday, 8.30pm) “sheds a little bit of light” on the socialist state.
“It didn’t seem a country under the oppressive gloom that is portrayed in the West.”