The BEST episodes of Storyville season 2017
Every episode of Storyville season 2017, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Storyville season 2017!
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 - 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.
#2 - Oink: Man Loves Pig
Season 2017 - Episode 15 - Aired 7/2/2017
Oink explores man's relationship to pigs, diving headfirst into a beguiling mix of sentimentality and violence - from keeping pigs in your bed to factory farming. The documentary veers wildly from the birth of Dorothy, our saddleback narrator, to zeno-transplantation of organs, from Ralph Steadman cartoons for Animal Farm to wild hogs being machine-gunned from a helicopter. Oink is a mad, bad journey from China to Wiltshire via Brooklyn, which reflects on who we are and how we deal with the world around us.
#3 - When Rock Arrived in North Korea: Liberation Day
Season 2017 - Episode 29 - Aired 12/7/2017
To the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian now Slovenian cult band, Laibach, became the first rock group ever invited to perform in the dictatorially repressed state of North Korea. Under the firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, Laibach must deal with strict ideology, cultural differences and many technological difficulties in order just to perform. Struggling to get their songs through rigorous censorship, they race against the clock so they can be unleashed on an audience never before exposed to alternative rock 'n' roll.
#4 - The Farthest: Voyager's Interstellar Journey
Season 2017 - Episode 28 - Aired 11/30/2017
Twelve billion miles away a tiny spaceship is leaving our solar system and entering the void of deep space. It is the first human-made object ever to do so. Slowly dying within its heart is a plutonium generator that will beat for perhaps another decade before the lights on Voyager finally go out. But this little craft will travel on for millions of years, carrying a Golden Record bearing recordings and images of life on Earth. The story of Voyager is an epic of human achievement, personal drama and almost miraculous success. Launched 16 days apart in 1977, the twin Voyager space probes have defied all the odds, survived countless near misses and almost 40 years later continue to beam revolutionary information across unimaginable distances. With less computing power than a modern hearing aid, they have unlocked the stunning secrets of our solar system. This film tells the story of these magnificent machines, the men and women who built them and the vision that propelled them farther than anyone could ever have hoped.
#5 - Last Men in Aleppo
Season 2017 - Episode 27 - Aired 11/27/2017
After five years of war in Syria the remaining 350,000 citizens of Aleppo are constantly under siege. Through the eyes of the volunteers of the White Helmets, in this film we experience daily life and death in the streets of Aleppo. Khalid, Subhi and Mahmoud are founding members of the White Helmets and are the first to enter destroyed buildings, scouring through the rubble in search of bodies and signs of life. They have chosen to stay in Aleppo to help save their people during the never-ending siege. Many lives including those of countless children and infants are lost during the bombings. But each day is a dilemma and a conflict for the men - should they stay and risk death themselves, or should they try to get out and save their own families, as other have? The film is a collaboration with the Aleppo Media Centre, and tells the extraordinary story of real heroes in an epic human tragedy.
#6 - My Mother's Lost Children
Season 2017 - Episode 26 - Aired 11/20/2017
A Storyville documentary: an eccentric Jewish family is thrown into turmoil when two stolen children reappear after 40 years.
#7 - Toffs, Queers and Traitors: The Extraordinary Life of Guy Burgess
Season 2017 - Episode 25 - Aired 11/13/2017
It was a scandal that shook the British establishment to its roots. In June 1951, the government was forced to admit that two Foreign Office diplomats had disappeared. One of them, Donald Maclean, had slipped through their fingers three days before he was due to be questioned for passing secrets to the Russians. The other, Guy Burgess, was a total surprise. He was a charming, clever Etonian, with powerful friends everywhere. And lovers too - at a time when homosexuality was illegal, Burgess made no secret of his sexual tastes. He turned out to be the most flamboyant of a ring of privileged Cambridge students who had secretly joined the Communists in the 1930s, disgusted by their own government's policy of appeasing Hitler. With the help of newly declassified documents, George Carey's film shows how the most celebrated spy ring of the 20th century grew out of the class system, sexual hypocrisy and the sheer incompetence of some people who then ran Britain.
#8 - Coming Home: Bowe Bergdahl vs the United States
Season 2017 - Episode 24 - Aired 10/30/2017
The story of the homecoming of US Army sergeant and former Taliban prisoner Bowe Bergdahl, after five years in captivity. After walking off his post in Afghanistan in 2009, US Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban and held in captivity for five years. This documentary by the film-maker and former Taliban hostage Sean Langan, who gained exclusive access to the former POW and his family, gives a unique perspective on Sgt Bergdahl's incredible story. Sgt Bergdahl was tortured and kept in a tiny cage by the Taliban, and endured the worst case of prisoner abuse since the war in Vietnam. But his real nightmare began on his return home to America. Freed in 2014 by President Obama in exchange for five Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo, he was then vilified in sections of the media as a traitor who collaborated with the enemy and 'converted to Islam'. To the American public, he was being portrayed as the real-life version of Homeland's Sgt Brody, and presidential candidate Donald Trump called for him to be shot as a 'dirty rotten traitor'. Days before his court martial in October 2017, he pleaded guilty to charges of desertion and endangering the lives of fellow soldiers but totally denied collaborating with the enemy. So what was his side of the story? Film-maker Sean Langan was himself held captive for four months by the same group that captured Bowe Bergdahl. He too was locked in a dark cell, interrogated and put through mock executions. With his special insight, Langan gets exclusive access to Bowe Bergdahl and to his parents, Bob and Jani. He presents a moving story about a soldier who made a mistake but who then in captivity fought his captors hard and paid a terrible price, and about a family caught in a storm of false allegations and fake news. Bowe Bergdahl, Sean Langan discovers, was a man with serious psychological issues who became a political football in a deeply divided America.
#9 - The Work: Four Days to Redemption
Season 2017 - Episode 23 - Aired 10/26/2017
Set inside one room in Folsom Prison in California, this film follows three men from outside as they take part in a four-day group therapy retreat with convicts serving long sentences for violent or gang-related crimes including murder, assault and robbery.
#10 - The Boy Who Changed America
Season 2017 - Episode 22 - Aired 9/6/2017
On 25 November 1999, a six-year-old Cuban boy was found floating alone off the Florida coast after his mother drowned during an attempt to escape Cuba for the United States. Set against the tense and acrimonious relationship between the two countries, The Boy Who Changed America tells the story of Elian Gonzalez and the bitter custody battle that played out in the aftermath of his rescue between his Cuban father and American relatives. Eighteen years later and in the wake of Fidel Castro's death, the now 23-year-old Elian and his family tell their story for the first time
#11 - Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web
Season 2017 - Episode 21 - Aired 8/21/2017
Documentary looking at the black market website known as the Silk Road, which emerged on the darknet in 2011. This 'Amazon of illegal drugs' was the brainchild of a mysterious, libertarian intellectual operating under the avatar The Dread Pirate Roberts. Promising its users complete anonymity and total freedom from government regulation or scrutiny, Silk Road became a million-dollar digital drugs cartel.
#12 - Out of Thin Air: Murder in Iceland
Season 2017 - Episode 20 - Aired 8/14/2017
In 1974 two men vanished several months apart. Iceland, with a population of just over 200,000, was a close, tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone, but the police got nowhere: there were no bodies, no witnesses and no forensic evidence. Then six suspects were arrested and confessed to the murders, many facing long, harsh sentences. It seemed like justice had been done, but nothing could be further from the truth. Forty years later, this notorious murder case was reopened when new evidence brought into question everything that had gone before. It became clear that the suspects had very quickly lost trust in their memories and were confused about their involvement in the crimes they had confessed to. The extreme police interrogation techniques were brought under intense scrutiny. This tense, psychological thriller tells the true story of the biggest-ever criminal investigation in Iceland's history, exploring one of the most shocking miscarriages of justice Europe has ever witnessed.
#13 - Queerama
Season 2017 - Episode 19 - Aired 7/31/2017
Created from a treasure trove of archive, Queerama traverses a century of gay experiences, encompassing persecution and prosecution, injustice, love and desire, identity, secrets, forbidden encounters, sexual liberation and pride. The soundtrack weaves the lyrics and music of John Grant, Goldfrapp and Hercules & Love Affair with the images and guides us intimately into the relationships, desires, fears and expressions of gay men and women in the 20th century- a century of incredible change.
#14 - Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government
Season 2017 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/24/2017
Carne Ross was a career diplomat who believed western democracy could save us all. But after the Iraq war he became disillusioned and resigned. This film traces Carne's worldwide quest to find a better way of doing things - from a farming collective in Spain, to Occupy Wall Street to Rojava in war-torn Syria - as he makes the epic journey from government insider to anarchist.
#15 - The Great European Cigarette Mystery
Season 2017 - Episode 17 - Aired 7/17/2017
The former EU commissioner of health, Mr John Dalli, recently left his post having been accused of being in the pocket of 'big tobacco'. Two Danish journalists, Mads Brugger and Mikael Bertelsen, travel to Malta expecting to uncover proof of a vast conspiracy against Mr Dalli, when a secret source steps forward, claiming to possess documents and recordings. Mr Dalli attempts to strike a deal with the source, taking them on a disturbing, thrilling and darkly humorous odyssey from the hallways of Brussels to an island in the Caribbean Sea.
#16 - This Was My Dad: The Rise and Fall of Geoffrey Matthews
Season 2017 - Episode 16 - Aired 7/10/2017
A profoundly intimate documentary filmed by Bafta-winning director Morgan Matthews over a period of more than ten years in the life of Morgan's father Geoff and his wonderfully eccentric partner Anna. In an attempt to reconnect with his dad after becoming estranged, Morgan uses the camera as both a facilitator and a filter that enables him to stay close during challenging times. The film follows Geoff and Anna through a financial crisis that sees them losing their home, it captures the challenges of their relationship, and documents the decline in Geoff's health as a result of emphysema and cancer. With the warmth, love and humour that is so often mixed up in family dramas, this is a documentary made from the inside by a film-maker who is used to turning his camera towards other people's families - but never his own. The result is deeply personal, but the themes of a challenging paternal dynamic, a relationship under pressure, and death in the family, are widespread and universal.
#17 - Tokyo Girls
Season 2017 - Episode 14 - Aired 6/27/2017
Girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. This film gets to the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet popularity. Meet Rio - a bona fide Tokyo idol who takes us on her journey toward fame. Now meet her 'brothers' - a group of adult male superfans who devote their lives to following her, in the virtual world and in real life. Once considered to be on the fringes of society, the brothers who gave up salaried jobs to pursue an interest in female idol culture have since become mainstream via the internet, illuminating the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies. Tokyo Girls explores the Japanese pop music industry and its focus on traditional beauty ideals, confronting the nature of gender power dynamics at work. As the female idols become younger and younger, the film looks at the veil of internet fame and the new terms of engagement that are playing out in real life around the globe.
#18 - OJ: Made in America (5)
Season 2017 - Episode 13 - Aired 5/18/2017
On the morning of October 3rd 1995, it was announced that OJ Simpson had been found not guilty of all charges. To many Americans, it was a stunning, almost explicable miscarriage of justice; a tragedy; a disturbing example of what money and power could buy in America. But to another group, it was an historic victory - payback for all the losses and all the injustice that they'd incurred over generations of history. As black America rejoiced, OJ went home, beginning what would become the strange, next phase of his life, a life lived in a form of celebratory purgatory - in many quarters shunned, scorned, and mocked, but in others, welcomed as a character in the circus that his saga had undeniably helped to create. From running from a guilty verdict in a wrongful death suit to working on a book that was a 'hypothetical conviction', his existence became more and more outlandish, until it all came crashing down on a night in 2007 in Las Vegas, a night that left Simpson where he is today, in prison for perhaps the rest of his life.
#19 - OJ: Made in America (4)
Season 2017 - Episode 12 - Aired 5/17/2017
In January 1995, the crime of the century gave way to the trial of the century. It would be like nothing before it, nor anything that's come since, and reshape the landscape of the media, and, truly, American culture along the way. Over the better part of ten months, there would be dozens of dramatic twists and turns, revelations and surprises, accusations and betrayals. The recollections of so many of the case's protagonists make for section after section of riveting film, all bringing back to life a trial that somehow evolved into a phenomenon that left the brutal murders of two people deep in forgotten shadows. Nothing, though, proved larger than the context - of everything that came before in the Los Angeles that OJ Simpson never knew. And in the trial's closing arguments, the dividing line of race - in Los Angeles, and America - was never starker.
#20 - OJ: Made in America (3)
Season 2017 - Episode 11 - Aired 5/16/2017
The police arrived at the condo on Bundy Drive at 4:25 a.m. on June 13th, 1994. It was a gruesome murder scene, clearly the result of a violent confrontation that had left two people dead - one of whom, they'd quickly discover, was the estranged wife of OJ Simpson. It was just the start of a chapter of American history like none other, one that would lay bare the realities of race, power, the legal system, the media, and so much more in Los Angeles, California and far beyond. Two decades later, the disagreements between the figures at the centre of investigating the case are still palpable. The events of June 17th 1994 are nearly as unfathomable as they were as they unfolded. And the beginnings of the battle in the courtroom are just as fascinating - the defence's strategy, just as unambiguous. OJ Simpson had spent his entire life running from the colour of his skin. Now, in so many ways, he was going to depend on it to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.
#21 - OJ: Made in America (2)
Season 2017 - Episode 10 - Aired 5/15/2017
There was never one Los Angeles, California. There were always two. One was the world inhabited by OJ Simpson - wealthy, privileged, and predominantly white. A world where celebrity was power, and where OJ - race be damned - was one of the most popular figures around, cultivating the perfect image, even if it hardly lined up with what lay beneath. Then there was the other LA, just a few miles away from Brentwood and his Rockingham estate, a place where millions of other black people lived an entirely different reality at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department. It was in that 'other' Los Angeles where riots erupted in 1992, and more than 50 people died with thousands more injured. The city burned for nearly a week that spring, laying bare all the anger, and all the alienation, that black people in Los Angeles felt towards the police. For his part, back in Brentwood, OJ Simpson had other concerns.
#22 - OJ: Made in America (1)
Season 2017 - Episode 9 - Aired 5/14/2017
Five-part series and winner of the 2017 Academy Award for Best Documentary chronicling the rise and fall of OJ Simpson. To many observers, the story of the crime of the century is a story that began the night Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally murdered outside her Brentwood condominium. But as the first episode lays bare, to truly grasp the significance of what happened not just that night, but the epic chronicle to follow, one has to travel back to points in time long before that. To generations prior, when African-Americans began migrating to California en masse, trying desperately - and fruitlessly - to outrun the racism that had defined their lives. To the late 1960s, when in the heart of Los Angeles, OJ Simpson rose to instant fame as an unstoppable running back for the USC Trojans. To the early 1970s, when he expanded that fame in the NFL, becoming the first player ever to rush for 2,000 yards in a season, and emerging as one of the most visible faces in sports. And to a few years after that, when with his celebrity transcending the game, Simpson retired from American football and returned to Los Angeles - his acting, advertising, and broadcasting careers in ascendance. It was also then that he fell madly in love - with a young, beautiful woman named Nicole Brown.
#23 - Last Days of Solitary
Season 2017 - Episode 8 - Aired 3/27/2017
In 2011, Maine State Prison launched a pioneering reform programme to scale back its use of solitary confinement. Bafta and Emmy-winning film-maker Dan Edge and his co-director Lauren Mucciolo were given unprecedented access to the solitary unit - and filmed there for more than three years. The result is an extraordinary and harrowing portrait of life in solitary - and a unique document of a radical and risky experiment to reform a prison. The US is the world leader in solitary confinement. More than 80,000 American prisoners live in isolation, some have been there for years, even decades. Solitary is proven to cause mental illness, it is expensive, and it is condemned by many as torture. And yet for decades, it has been one of the central planks of the American criminal justice system.
#24 - North Korean Kidnap: The Lovers and the Despot
Season 2017 - Episode 7 - Aired 3/20/2017
The bizarre and sensational story of the despot who stole a film star. In 1978, North Korea's movie-loving dictator Kim Jong-il arranged for the Hong Kong kidnap of South Korea's leading lady, Choi Eun-hee. Choi had left South Korea in search of a new start. Her marriage to Shin Sang-ok, her long-term collaborator and one of the country's most successful filmmakers, had collapsed when Choi found out about his affair and second family with a younger actress. After her disappearance Shin, retracing her last known steps, also fell into the hands of Kim's kidnappers. Kim Jong-il had his prize. The golden couple of Korean cinema made movies at his command for seven years until, on a trip to Vienna, they eluded their minders and made a break for the American Embassy.
#25 - Murder in Italy
Season 2017 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/13/2017
On Friday, 26th November 2010, in the close-knit town of Bergamo, Letizia Ruggeri received a telephone call. It was Maura Gambirasio, a mother whose 13-year-old daughter Yara hadn't come home from the gym. Letizia, who spent years investigating mafia murders in Sicily, thought of her own daughter and promised she would find Yara. Three months later, Yara's body was tragically discovered - she had been attacked. With just one piece of DNA evidence to go on, Letizia started a hunt for a perpetrator that would take four years, 20,000 DNA samples, ingenuity and tenacity to find the identity of 'Unknown Male no 1'. It was a revelation that would unlock deep family secrets that still reverberated when the suspect was finally brought to trial.