The state of British TV documentary film-making is a little depressing at the moment. Open up the documentaries tab on iPlayer, Now, ITVX or Channel 4, and you’ll be assaulted by a rush of true crime docs, each with their own macabre/salacious title – Satan’s Au Pair, Catching the Frying Pan Killer, that sort of thing – and a little rectangular title card with said killer looking evil, preferably in a grainy black and white picture with a bloody thumbprint overlaid.
And it if isn’t true crime you’re greeted with, it will be one of the other broadcaster-permitted forms of documentary these days: celebrity travelogues; largely unenlightening pop science docs about just how bad a certain type of food is for you; shameless corporate tie-ins where someone walks round a Haribo factory and gawps in wonder; tightly controlled famous-people profiles, where anything vaguely controversial or interesting has been sliced out of the final, interviewee-approved cut; or series about air fryers (Channel 5, we salute your unwavering commitment to this sub-genre).
