IAN HISLOP’S FAKE NEWS: A TRUE STORY

BBC Four, 9.00pm

“Obviously you would never find fakery on the BBC and I would never mislead you,” says Ian Hislop midway through this film, before embarking on a worldclass, tour de force solo ballet routine. Every blink, smile and frown on his face appears to be his own, even as his body moves like Carlos Acosta beneath him.

It is a superb, hilarious and deeply troubling example of deep fake video manipulation (currently the subject of BBC1’s The Capture), and just one highlight in a film that is more than a history of fakery in the media, though it is that, too. From some of the earliest fake news stories of the mid-19th century, when newspaper technology allowed people to be duped on a mass scale for the first time – usually to boost circulation – Hislop explores the methodology of faking news stories and the motivations behind those who do it. He comes up with many bizarre examples (stories of Hillary Clinton’s secret child-sex trafficking ring beneath a Washington pizzeria might be funnier had they not resulted in an actual shooting) and many more where powerful people and unscrupulous politicians spread lies to suit their own ends. Essential viewing for our times. Gerard O’Donovan

True lies: the Private Eye editor squares up to the news