Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? (BBC Four) | iPlayer
A Storm Foretold (BBC Four) | iPlayer
Paris Olympics 2024 (BBC/Eurosport/Discovery Plus)
Slip (ITVX) | itv.com
What to say about Dror Moreh’s BBC Four docuseries Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? That it’s a damning indictment of a superpower that intervenes in global atrocities only when it suits its own interests. That it leaves you rinsed in hopelessness and disgust. That it opens with second world war Nazi death camps (a genocide ignored at the time) and the vow of “Never again”, then, episode by soul-crushing episode, produces proof that “again” is exactly what’s allowed to happen.
With Meryl Streep narrating, Moreh has repurposed footage and interviews to produce an eight-part director’s cut of his 2022 documentary The Corridors of Power. Among the impressive roster of heavyweight interviewees (Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice) some have since died, including several former US secretaries of state (Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger).
With all eight episodes available, the opener looks at Iraq. Saddam Hussein is merely rebuked when he uses chemical weapons on the Kurdish people, but he’s denounced by President George HW Bush as “Hitler revisited” when he invades oil-rich Kuwait. (“People said if Kuwait grew bananas, we would never have liberated Kuwait,” observes former deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz.) Next, it’s on to Bosnia and Slobodan Milošević’s ethnic cleansing (under President Bill Clinton, the US is painfully slow to get involved). Faced with Rwandan massacres, the US gets its own people out then backs away. When there’s mass carnage in Darfur, US aid is sent, but it takes a coup to topple Sudanese despot Omar al-Bashir.
So it goes on, ending with an examination of Barack Obama’s overcautious handling of the escalating nightmare of Syria, with the refugee exodus and the continuing consequences. While the point is made that sometimes you have to choose peace over justice, at every turn there’s high-level wrangling over whether to define the atrocities as genocide (yes, it’s complicated, but withholding the term means that nations such as the US aren’t so pressured to get involved). Corridors of Power lacks outsider/non-American voices but this is excoriating fare, leaving the US wreathed in thick moral fog. Be warned; footage of the desperate, mutilated and dead is explicit and almost unbearable.
BBC Four has another hard-hitting American current affairs documentary, A Storm Foretold (which had a 2023 cinema release). Christoffer Guldbrandsen spent three years following Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s political adviser. Stone, now 71, is seen devising the “Stop the Steal” campaign, which culminated, after Joe Biden’s victory, in the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
At one point, Guldbrandsen is shown on CCTV suffering a cardiac arrest in the gym, seemingly induced by the myriad pressures of making the documentary. The result of his sacrifice is a jaw-drop of a watch. Stone, Republican fixer, emerges as a cigar-chomping machiavellian (“Saving western civilisation is hard work”). He cheerfully admits to manipulating Trump: you get the feeling Stone considers Trump to be the mere frontman – the showbiz facade – for his own ambitions.
Only nuclear-strength egotism could explain why Stone let the cameras in, and up so close. We even watch him getting his roots bleached, which is quite the metropolitan elite move considering the company he keeps. Trump appears only in other footage, his trademark pumpkin-hued skin exaggerated by pale rings around his eyes (fake-tan goggles? Refreshing cucumber slices? Who knows with these rightwing dandies). With thudding inevitability, figures such as conspiracist Alex Jones swirl into view. White nationalist group the Proud Boys act as if they’re Stone’s security detail. At a particularly jarring point, he joshes about a “Shoot a liberal for Christ” day.
When Stone is found guilty of a seven-count indictment connected to Trump’s 2016 election campaign and to Russian interference, Trump commutes his sentence. However, by the time of the Capitol attack, Stone has been sidelined (he watches it unfold on a hotel room television). Later, furious at being betrayed by Trump, he rants to someone over the phone, presumably about Trump (“Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter!”), and threatens to support impeachment, all the while working his mouth like an angle grinder. Afterwards, he says calmly to Guldbrandsen: “Obviously, if you use any of that, I’ll murder you.” Flabbergasting.
What on earth will we do with ourselves when the Paris Olympics 2024 are over? I’m barely aware of which channel or app I’m watching any more (BBC, Eurosport, Discovery+). It’s all just a blur of leotards, trainers and unattainable musculature.
If it isn’t British teenager, Toby “the Terminator” Roberts scurrying, Spider-Boy-style, to gold in climbing, it’s champion US gymnast Simone Biles toppling from a beam (apparently distracted by crowd members shushing other people cheering). Just as Team GB’s Keely Hodgkinson sprinted to gold in the 800m, Team USA’s Noah Lyles ran in hair pearls and nail varnish to snag his own 100m gold medal victory.
To top it all, the unlikely (and, one hears, extremely well-remunerated) Olympic correspondent for US TV network NBC, Snoop Dogg, has been boosting Team USA’s morale and paving the way for Los Angeles 2028. He is everywhere, doing everything, from faux fencing to popping on equestrian outfits, to taking a swim with Olympics great Michael Phelps. The Olympics have become like Glastonbury for fit people. Never mind the sport, when it’s all over there will be a TV abyss.
Over on ITVX, the seven-part multiverse dramedy Slip sounded a little conceptually overcooked. Written by and starring New Girl’s Zoe Lister-Jones (Dakota Johnson is executive producer), it centres on Mae, a New York gallerist in a dead marriage who is transported via an illicit orgasm to another dimension, where she’s another version of herself, in another bed, in another relationship, with a man or woman. Every time Mae has an orgasm, it happens again. “I think my pussy is a wormhole.”
Slip can be arch, and it gets old watching Mae having her dimension-spanning orgasms. However, four episodes in, it’s also well performed, sparky, inventive and funny, incorporating sundry themes, from childhood to fear of motherhood to ghastly celebrities, micro-dosing and Buddhism. The elevator pitch for this might be “Russian Doll (ish) meets Quantum Leap (sort of), with added nudity and panting”. Worth a look.
Star ratings (out of five)
Corridors of Power: Should America Police The World? ★★★★
A Storm Foretold ★★★★★
Paris Olympics 2024 ★★★★
Slip ★★★
What else I’m watching
On the Edge
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The drama strand championing new writers and directors returns with a trio of 30-minute films with caring themes, including adoption and dementia. The first, Wet Look, is an imaginative, left-field affair starring Tanya Reynolds as a mermaid pining for the sea.
Irvine Welsh’s Crime
(ITV1)
Previously shown on ITVX. Dougray Scott storms forth in the second series of Irvine Welsh’s uncompromising, unconventional, Edinburgh-set detective series.
Love Is Blind UK
(Netflix)
People get engaged, sight unseen, after chatting in pods. Hosted by Emma and Matt Willis, the British version of the US dating show is bloodcurdlingly addictive reality fare.
