Rare is the reconstruction in a documentary that adds anything to the story. Rare, in fact, that it doesn’t actively hold up proceedings and require actors to perform (usually in caveman skins or low-budget Tudorbethan costume) for viewers something they were perfectly capable of visualising and would have been better off doing so.
A deeply moving exception to this rule is to be found in the new three-part documentary Aids: The Unheard Tapes (BBC Two). In the 1980s and 90s, as a new and apparently unstoppable disease ravaged the gay community, volunteers began to record for posterity interviews with the men infected with what would eventually be identified as the HIV virus, and with their friends. The tapes are now archived at the British Library and have never been broadcast before. In the documentary, actors lip-sync to them. What sounds on paper like a terrible gimmick works beautifully, bringing you closer to appreciating all that was lost as the crisis unfolded and government inertia demanded that ordinary people step up and do extraordinary things to save themselves and others.
