The BEST episodes of Storyville season 2020

#1 - The Mole: Infiltrating North Korea (1)

Season 2020 - Episode 15 - Aired 10/13/2020

A real-life undercover thriller about two ordinary men who embark on an outrageously dangerous ten-year mission to penetrate the world's most secretive and brutal dictatorship: North Korea.

#2 - Red Penguins: Murder, Money and Ice Hockey

Season 2020 - Episode 21 - Aired 12/7/2020

A tale of capitalism and opportunism run amok - complete with gangsters, strippers and live bears serving beer on a hockey rink in Moscow. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the famed Red Army hockey team formed a joint venture that showed that anything was possible in the new Russia. Eccentric marketing whiz Steve Warshaw is sent to Russia and tasked with transforming the team into the greatest show in Moscow. He takes the viewer on a bizarre journey, highlighting a pivotal moment in US-Russia relations in a lawless era when oligarchs made their fortunes and multiple murders went unsolved.

#3 - The Gene Revolution: Changing Human Nature

Season 2020 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/27/2020

The biggest tech revolution of the 21st century isn't digital, it's biological. A breakthrough called CRISPR has given us unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere and designing our own children. This Storyville documentary is a provocative exploration of CRISPR's far-reaching implications, through the eyes of the scientists who discovered it, the families it’s affecting and the bio-engineers who are testing its limits. How will this new power change our relationship with nature? What will it mean for human evolution? To begin to answer these questions, we must look back billions of years and peer into an uncertain future.

#4 - Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (1)

Season 2020 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/7/2020

Why did Jim Jones, a charismatic American preacher and leader of the People's Temple, compel his members in 1978 to commit 'revolutionary suicide' in northern Guyana?

#5 - Scandalous! The Tabloid that Changed America

Season 2020 - Episode 10 - Aired 6/24/2020

Documentary examining how the National Enquirer became the most infamous tabloid in America by churning out obscene stories that blur the lines between truth and fiction

#6 - College Behind Bars (1)

Season 2020 - Episode 8 - Aired 6/15/2020

A two-part Storyville documentary that tells the inspiring story of a group of men and women in the USA struggling to earn college degrees while in prison for serious crimes. The Bard Prison Initiative is one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programmes in the United States. Shot over four years in maximum and medium security prisons in New York State, the films tackles a pressing issue - the failure to provide meaningful rehabilitation for over two million Americans living behind bars. Through the stories of the students and their families, we discover many dropped out of high school before being incarcerated and never imagined they would go to college. During four years of study, however, they become accomplished scholars, beat the Harvard debating team, reckon with their pasts and discover how truly transformative education can be.

#7 - College Behind Bars (2)

Season 2020 - Episode 9 - Aired 6/15/2020

The debate team faces West Point and Harvard. Seniors complete their 100-paged thesis projects. Giovannie is sent to the Special Housing Unit and might not finish his project. Students at Taconic and Eastern receive their degrees at graduation.

#8 - Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2)

Season 2020 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/8/2020

The Jonestown project quickly begins to implode. Jones's excessive drug use, irrational behaviour and the isolation of his followers raises the alarm back home.

#9 - Pepe the Frog: Feels Good Man

Season 2020 - Episode 17 - Aired 10/26/2020

Pepe the Frog started life in 2005 as a cute cartoon character in Boy’s Club, an American indie comic on Myspace. Today, he is known as an international hate symbol after being hijacked by the alt-right. Pepe the Frog: Feels Good Man follows Pepe’s creator, artist Matt Furie, as he fights to bring back his lovable comic-book character from the dark forces who stole him. As the internet exploded, memes of the benign and chill frog-dude started sweeping the internet with lightning speed. Once his image found its way into controversial online community 4chan – the anonymous, anything-goes forum rife with misogyny and racism - there was no turning back. Pepe re-emerged from the darkest corner of the internet decorated with swastikas and spewing racist slurs. He was even caught up in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

#10 - Price of Gold

Season 2020 - Episode 22 - Aired 12/14/2020

A Storyville documentary that revisits the 1994 scandal that embroiled competing US Olympic figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.

#11 - The Mole: Infiltrating North Korea (2)

Season 2020 - Episode 16 - Aired 10/13/2020

#12 - Locked In: Breaking the Silence

Season 2020 - Episode 20 - Aired 11/30/2020

An intimate, personal and surprisingly life-affirming story with a rare illness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, at its heart. Director Xavier Alford is finally confronting an illness he has been hiding from family, close friends and even himself. Locked In: Breaking the Silence follows him trying to make sense of the mysterious illness that has taken over his life in the only way he knows how - by making a film about it. What is it like to get a diagnosis of an incredibly rare condition that turns your whole world upside down? No-one can tell you why or how you got it, not even doctors. No-one knows how to beat it and there is no cure. In a time when much of the world is experiencing lockdown, Locked In offers, with unflinching positivity, a fresh perspective on coping mechanisms and the recovery from virus-related diseases.

#13 - The Hijacker Who Vanished: The Mystery of DB Cooper

Season 2020 - Episode 19 - Aired 11/23/2020

A mysterious fugitive, a hijacked airplane and a daring mid-air escape. This is the extraordinary, real-life tale of one of the greatest unsolved heists in American history and a case that has taunted the FBI for decades. This documentary brings the stories of the four possible suspects to life through candid testimony, archive footage and stylised drama. Each account is gripping and highly plausible. But who is telling the truth, who is lying and, ultimately, who is DB Cooper?

#14 - The Night Notre-Dame Burned

Season 2020 - Episode 18 - Aired 11/16/2020

A Storyville documentary that tells the dramatic story of the devastating fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral on 15 April 2019. Blow by blow, it follows the team of brave firefighters - from the men and women on the frontline to the brigade chief - as they face the epic responsibility of saving one of the city's most emblematic and much–loved symbols from burning to the ground. As well as on-the-ground helmet cam and drone footage of the unfolding, dramatic events, the film-makers – the Naudet Brothers – who famously recorded the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 in New York – were themselves at the scene to record a moment in history in their own capital city. In one tense moment, after the collapse of the spire, we are inside the situation room where President Macron must decide whether to risk the lives of 40 firefighters by sending them into the burning towers to stop the fire bringing total devastation to the building. This observational footage is intercut with the testimony of the firefighters themselves, whose pride and heroic dignity in fulfilling their roles cannot fail to bring a viewer to tears.

#15 - The Two Escobars

Season 2020 - Episode 14 - Aired 9/6/2020

At a time when drug money fuelled the sport known in the underworld as "Narco-soccer", the fates of Andres Escobar, the inspirational captain of Colombia's Nacional, and Pablo Escobar, the notorious leader of the Medellin cartel, were permanently linked. When Andres was murdered 10 days after scoring an own goal against the USA in the first round of the 1994 World Cup, it cost the country more than a shot at the title.

#16 - United Skates

Season 2020 - Episode 13 - Aired 7/14/2020

Documentary exploring the campaign to save the US's last standing roller rinks from closure against a backdrop of growing racial tension. The film reveals the story of underground subculture that has grown up around these venues and given rise to some of the world's greatest musical talent - but has itself remained virtually unknown to the mainstream.

#17 - The Underdog and the Battle for Kenya

Season 2020 - Episode 12 - Aired 7/8/2020

A Storyvile documentary that looks at the tough reality of running for politics in a country riven by corruption and tribal factionalism through the story of Boniface 'Softie' Mwangi.

#18 - Welcome to Chechnya: The Gay Purge

Season 2020 - Episode 11 - Aired 7/1/2020

A Storyville documentary that lays bare Chechnya's deadly war against its gay citizens and which reveals the bravery of those running rescue missions to protect the republic's LGBTQ community.

#19 - The Accused: Damned or Devoted?

Season 2020 - Episode 7 - Aired 3/2/2020

In Pakistan, the blasphemy law prescribes a compulsory death sentence for disrespecting Prophet Muhammad and life imprisonment for desecrating the Qur’an. This Storyville documentary follows the stories and fates of four people accused of blasphemy. The most famous of them is Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who claims she was falsely accused by her Muslim co-workers after a disagreement. As the elections in Pakistan loom, the country is split between those who feel the law is being misused and want to change it, and those who believe it must be preserved at any cost. Its greatest advocate, cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, goes on a mission to do just this. As his campaign heats up, he gathers millions of supporters, sympathetic to his goal, and silences anyone attempting to change the law by condemning them to death.

#20 - The Rise and Fall of a Porn Superstar

Season 2020 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/24/2020

When 23-year-old Israeli Jonathan Agassi arrived with a bang on the gay porn scene in the late 2000s, his rise to fame was stratospheric, revolutionising the industry. After a traumatic childhood growing up gay in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the man behind the performer claims that porn saved his life, but at a cost. The Rise and Fall of a Porn Superstar charts Agassi’s journey from prolific adult superstar to male escort, battling many demons. Filmed over seven years, this unflinching, emotional and at times funny and shocking film explores the deeper and more devastating reasons for Agassi's self-destructive behaviour with sensitivity and compassion. The film also provides a rare and intimate insight into an industry that prioritises hedonism and fantasy above all, but at its core, this rollercoaster tale is a rare portrait of a damaged family and its lasting impact on those who are part of it.

#21 - Fishing for Love: How to Catch a Thai Bride

Season 2020 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/17/2020

A Storyville documentary that reveals the complex and surprising truth behind the relationships of four Thai-Danish married couples in a small fishing community in Denmark.

#22 - Advocate: A Lawyer without Borders

Season 2020 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/10/2020

Jewish lawyer Lea Tsemel is a controversial figure in Israel. For the last 50 years, she has fearlessly defended Palestinians prosecuted in Israeli courts for resisting the occupation both violently and non-violently. Taking on tough cases, including charges of terrorism, the odds are stacked sharply against her. To many Israelis, Lea defends the indefensible, but for Palestinians she is more than a lawyer, she is an advocate. This documentary follows Tsemel’s caseload, including the high-profile trial of 13-year-old Ahmed - her youngest client to date - charged with the attempted murder of two Israelis for his involvement in a stabbing attack. Ahmed, whose 15-year-old cousin led the attack but was killed by police on the scene, now depends on Lea to prove he had no intent to kill, in order to save him from a lengthy sentence in an adult prison.