The BEST episodes of Storyville
Every episode of Storyville ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Storyville!
Storyville has developed an enviable reputation since it was launched by the BBC in 1997 as a showcase for the best in international documentaries. Screening over 340 films, from some 70 different countries, the strand has garnered a staggering array of awards: five Oscars, 15 Griersons, three Peabodys and two International Emmys.
#1 - Muscle Shoals: The Greatest Recording Studio in the World
Season 2014 - Episode 9 - Aired 3/7/2014
Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals in Alabama is the unlikely breeding ground for some of America's most creative and defiant music. Under the spiritual influence of the 'Singing River', as Native Americans called it, the music of Muscle Shoals has helped create some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. At its heart is Rick Hall, who founded FAME Studios. Overcoming poverty and tragedy, Hall brought black and white together in Alabama's cauldron of racial hostility to create music for the generations. Greg Allman, Bono, Clarence Carter, Mick Jagger, Etta James, Alicia Keys, Keith Richards, Percy Sledge and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals's magnetism, mystery and why it remains influential today.
#2 - India's Daughter
Season 2015 - Episode 10 - Aired 3/4/2015
India's Daughter tells the story of the brutal gang rape and murder of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012, and the unprecedented protests and riots which this horrific event ignited throughout India, leading to the demand for changes in attitudes towards women. The film examines the values and mindsets of the rapists, and interviews the two lawyers who defended the men convicted of Jyoti's rape and murder.
#3 - Hitler, Stalin, and Mr Jones
Season 2012 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/5/2012
An investigation into who killed Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. Jones's greatest scoop was to reveal the starvation to death of millions in 1930s Ukraine, caused by Stalin's policies. A portrait emerges of a fiercely bright young man who preferred a journalist's life of courage and danger which took him from smalltown Wales to even hitching a lift in Hitler's private plane. However, in a 1930s world of competing ideologies, there existed a fine line between journalism and spying. This film explores to what extent this dual role, and taking on Stalin, may have contributed to his early death on the plains of Mongolia.
#4 - Bus 174
Season 2006 - Episode 14 - Aired 3/28/2006
A chilling Storyville documentary using vivid TV-news footage to recount the hijacking of a bus in Rio de Janeiro by a lone gunman, whose brutal life story of grinding poverty, drugs and random violence is also explored.
#5 - Barca: The Inside Story (2004)
Season 2005 - Episode 13 - Aired 2/20/2005
Documentary following the fortunes of Barcelona Football Club over a year of crisis. With poor performances and spiralling debts, reform of the club is urgently needed. The new board, under the leadership of the charismatic Joan Laporta, attempt to turn an old fashioned Catalan family affair into a global football business.
#6 - Prostitution Behind the Veil
Season 2006 - Episode 29 - Aired 10/2/2006
Prostitution Behind the Veil explores a side of Iran rarely seen or talked about. For over a year, director Nahid Persson filmed the everyday lives of two young female prostitutes in Iran as they eked out a living in a country where the profession is banned. The filmmaker often took great risks to follow Minna and Fariba as they sought out customers-men who would often marry them briefly, so as not to violate the laws of Islam by having extramarital sex. The two women are good friends and neighbor, who have experienced the widespread mistreatment of women and the double standards that permeate Iranian society today.
#7 - The Man Who Fooled the Nazis
Season 2011 - Episode 7 - Aired 2/22/2011
Documentary which catalogues how a Spanish farmer named Juan Pujol became 'Garbo', one of the most successful double agents in history. The British code-named him Garbo for being the 'greatest actor in the world', because of his ability to gain the Third Reich's trust and make possible the successful D-Day landings that turned the course of history.
#8 - Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary
Season 2005 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/6/2005
Storyville documentary featuring an interview with Traudl Junge , who worked as one of Hitler's secretaries from 1942 until the dictator's suicide in 1945.
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#9 - Ghosts of the 7th Cavalry
Season 2009 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/16/2009
Powerful documentary from Emmy award-winning director Tom Roberts which explores the profound human consequences of America's frontier wars through the moving personal journey of retired US Major Robert 'Snuffy' Gray, who fought with the controversial 7th Cavalry Regiment.
#10 - 1968
Season 2008 - Episode 33 - Aired 9/22/2008
Documentary exploring what really happened throughout the world in the seminal year of 1968, a time of music and of revolution, asking why so many hopes were disappointed and what is the period's true legacy. Drawing on archive footage from the US, Vietnam, Britain, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Mexico, the film dynamically reconstructs the hopes, the fears and the ultimate sense of despair that pervaded the events of 1968.
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#11 - Dr. Goebbels Speaks
Season 2005 - Episode 20 - Aired 5/5/2005
Archive footage and extracts from Goebbels' voluminous diaries combine to provide a vivid insight into the mind of Hitler's propaganda minister.
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#12 - Power, Money, Greed & Oil
Season 2013 - Episode 15 - Aired 6/24/2013
An epic venture into capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century. Made over five years, this documentary is a comprehensive insider account of a modern-day gold rush as Dallas-based Kosmos Energy race ahead to develop the first commercial oil field in Ghana's history, in the deep waters of the Gulf of Guinea. Director Rachel Boynton follows the larger-than-life cast as Kosmos, the Ghanaian government and numerous other stakeholders jostle to realise their huge ambitions. While in Ghana she makes side trips to nearby Nigeria, whose own oil reserves have been responsible for a vicious cycle of exploitation with little appreciable benefit to the country itself. The film poses vital questions about what fundamentally motivates mankind - is unchecked greed an intrinsic part of the human character? Can what unites us ever be greater than what divides us?
#13 - Particle Fever: The Hunt for the Higgs Boson
Season 2014 - Episode 22 - Aired 10/15/2014
Documentary which follows six brilliant scientists during the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, marking the start of the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet. Filmed over seven years, it is an emotionally charged journey with scientists attempting to push the edge of human innovation. For the first time, a documentary gives viewers a front row seat to a significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough as it happens. As they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe, 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries join forces in pursuit of a single goal - to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the big bang and find the Higgs boson, potentially explaining the origin of all matter. Directed by a physicist-turned-filmmaker and masterfully edited by Walter Murch (The Godfather trilogy), Particle Fever is a celebration of discovery, revealing the human stories behind this epic machine.
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#14 - Notes On Blindness
Season 2017 - Episode 3 - Aired 2/16/2017
In 1983, after decades of steady deterioration, John Hull, a professor at the University of Birmingham, became totally blind. To help him make sense of the upheaval in his life, he began documenting his experiences on audio cassette. Over three years he recorded over 16 hours of material.
#15 - Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story
Season 2008 - Episode 27 - Aired 7/25/2008
Documentary telling the story of Stax, one of the most influential soul record labels ever. Founded in a black neighbourhood of Memphis by a white brother and sister in the 1960s as a studio with an open-door policy, the label went on to sign such iconic acts as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and their house band, Booker T and the MGs. Featuring interviews with Jesse Jackson, Elvis Costello, Chuck D, Justin Timberlake, Bono and Pete Townshend.
#16 - Bulletproof Salesman
Season 2009 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/2/2009
Documentary about self-confessed war profiteer Fidelis Cloer, who, in a career spanning two decades of global turmoil, has supplied kings, presidents and the occasional dictator with the finest luxury armoured vehicles money can buy. In his world, where security is a commodity that can be bought and sold, violence is to sales as the weather is to wheat futures. Always with an on eye on growth opportunities, Fidelis found himself the perfect war when the US invaded Iraq.
#17 - Norman Mailer - Oh My America (Part 1): Farewell to the Fifties
Season 2000 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/11/2000
The first of a two-part programme in which writer Norman Mailer profiles life in America since the Second World War. Mailer fought for his country in the Second World War - an experience that inspired his novel "The Naked and the Dead" - but, disappointed by post-war America, he grew to despise the 1950s.
#18 - Christ Comes to the Papuans
Season 2001 - Episode 22 - Aired 12/19/2001
How the influence of Christian missionaries in Papua New Guinea is steadily eroding the traditional customs and beliefs of the tribes people there.
#19 - Norman Mailer - Oh My America (Part 2): Beyond the Revolution
Season 2000 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/12/2000
In this second and final episode, writer and social critic Norman Mailer describes the revolution in attitudes during the 1960s, the impact of the Vietnam war, and the Reagan and Clinton years.
#20 - Donald and Luba
Season 2000 - Episode 7 - Aired 12/22/2000
Film-maker Don Boyd's parents were an unlikely couple. His mother, the youngest of 12 children, was born into a poverty-stricken Ukrainian family in China. His father Donald grew up in the death throes of the British Empire, with all the trappings of colonial wealth. Their meeting in Shanghai heralded a strange and tumultuous relationship. Don Boyd charts the truth about his parents as he travels around the world following the course of their lives.
#21 - I Loved You
Season 2001 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/2/2001
Award-winning film-maker Viktor Kossakovsky examines the nature of human love in three stories which together look at his mentors, a shot-gun wedding outside Moscow, and the relationship of two St Petersburg kindergarten children.
#22 - Black and White in Colour
Season 2001 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/4/2001
Documentary focusing on Vera Bila, the most successful Romany singer in Europe. Born in Slovakia, she travels around Europe in search of places to perform, all the while awaiting her son's release from prison. The film also sheds light on the plight of Europe's neglected Romany communities.
#23 - The Sweetest Sound
Season 2001 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/14/2001
Film-maker Alan Berliner is tired of being mistaken for one of the many people who share his name. In this film, he goes in search of others who share his problem. After visiting same-name societies all over America, he attempts to come to terms with his alter egos when he holds a dinner party where invites are confined to people called Alan Berliner. There they explore the links that have resulted in them having the same name.
#24 - R.U.E.U?
Season 2001 - Episode 4 - Aired 3/15/2001
Nick Fraser travels to Brussels in an effort to understand the European Union.
#25 - Joseph Desire Mobutu
Season 2001 - Episode 5 - Aired 3/22/2001
The story of the cook's son who became a feared, tyrannical leader in Zaire