The WORST episodes of Storyville

#1 - An American Love Story (Part 2): I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

Season 1999 - Episode 7 - Aired 10/31/1999

Daughter Cicily travels to Nigeria to spend a term with a group of students.

#2 - 444 Days

Season 1998 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/14/1998

Leslie Woodhead's film about the Iranian hostage crisis of November 1979. Militant Islamic students - angered by US support for the Shah of Iran - invaded the American Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats hostage. For 444 days, the world watched helplessly as the United States attempted to free the diplomats in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini's fervent anti-Americanism. Only after a botched rescue attempt, and President Carter's election defeat by Ronald Reagan, were the hostages finally freed. The documentary hears from both hostages and their captors.

#3 - Year of the Dogs

Season 1998 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/21/1998

Michael Cordell's film about an Australian-rules football team's struggle to triumph over adversity. The Footscray Bulldogs, whose ground is based in a rundown Melbourne suburb, have the odds stacked against them in several ways. Their difficulties - they last won a tournament in 1954, have injury problems and a chronic scoring record, and are facing near-bankruptcy - are compounded by the threat of a takeover which could see them merged with another team.

#4 - Waco: The Rules of Engagement

Season 1998 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/28/1998

Director William Gazecki's Oscar-nominated investigation into the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The media reported that 76 members of David Koresh's sect committed mass suicide at Waco. Gazecki's film - which includes images that some might find disturbing - alleges they were murdered when FBI agents gassed and burned down the compound. It also challenges the widespread portrayal of the Davidians as promiscuous social outcasts.

#5 - Gigi, Monica and Bianca

Season 1998 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/5/1998

This poignant film follows the fortunes of Gigi and his pregnant girlfriend Monica in post-communist Romania. The couple are first seen as teenagers living rough in a Bucharest railway station. Monica wants to keep her baby but the Romanian authorities insist she is too young. The film follows the pair over two years as they struggle to survive and adapt to life as new parents.

#6 - Moon Over Broadway

Season 1998 - Episode 9 - Aired 12/21/1998

An account of American comedy actress Carol Burnett's turbulent return to the Broadway stage. It covers the uncertainties felt by the cast and production team as they prepare for their New York opening, including whether the audience will respond to the jokes and if the scenery will stay upright.

#7 - A Small Town in Poland

Season 1999 - Episode 1 - Aired 3/21/1999

The small town of Bransk used to boast a large Jewish population before the Holocaust. As Bransk prepares to celebrate its 500th anniversary, the authorities debate whether to acknowledge the town's Jewish past.

#8 - Resurrection

Season 1999 - Episode 2 - Aired 4/4/1999

Cuba's cemeteries are too small to hold all of the country's dead. This film chronicles the emotional scenes at the exhumation of bodies after they have been buried for three years, and the subsequent storing of their bones in a crypt - a process that is watched by the dead's relatives.

#9 - Fragments: Jerusalem

Season 1999 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/4/1999

Director Ron Havilio intertwines a highly personal view of Jerusalem - where he has lived for nearly 50 years - with an overview of the Holy City's fascinating and litigious history. He also looks at life in the city as it approaches the new millennium.

#10 - Photographer

Season 1999 - Episode 4 - Aired 9/4/1999

In 1987, 600 colour slides depicting scenes in a wartime Jewish ghetto in Poland were found in a Vienna bookshop. Polish director Dariusz Jabłoński's film uses these photographs - which were taken by the Nazi's chief accountant at the Lodz ghetto, a large and notorious work camp - to provide a chilling testimonial to one of the Second World War's darkest chapters.

#11 - I Was a Slave Labourer

Season 1999 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/16/1999

For over five decades, German government and industry have resisted demands to pay compensation to the millions who worked as slave labourers under the Third Reich. This film follows retired businessman Rudy Kennedy - who survived slave labour as a teenager - as he tries to force German firms to acknowledge their links with Nazi atrocities.

#12 - An American Love Story (Part 1): Welcome to America

Season 1999 - Episode 6 - Aired 10/30/1999

Seven-part documentary from director Jennifer Fox shedding light on the state of race relations in the US by following two years in the lives of a mixed-race married couple and their two children in New York. In the first part, which acts as an introduction to the family, Cicily leaves home to go to college. [Note: This Storyville series is a condensed, 310-minute version of the PBS original, which was formed of ten 60-minute episodes.]

#13 - Don't Look Back

Season 1998 - Episode 4 - Aired 10/31/1998

Donn Pennebaker's acclaimed documentary of Bob Dylan's month-long 1965 tour of Britain, during which the star was accompanied by Joan Baez. An intimate portrait of the artist, the film includes concert footage and features other celebrities of the era, such as folk star Donovan and singer/songwriter Alan Price. Songs include "The Times They Are A-changin'" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues".

#14 - An American Love Story (Part 3): It's Another New Year and I Ain't Gone

Season 1999 - Episode 8 - Aired 11/1/1999

The family celebrate Christmas, but Cicily contracts malaria.

#15 - An American Love Story (Part 4): Chaney and the Boy

Season 1999 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/2/1999

Chaney introduces her first boyfriend to Bill and Karen. Is she too young for romantic matters?

#16 - An American Love Story (Part 5): True Love

Season 1999 - Episode 10 - Aired 11/3/1999

The family faces a crisis when Karen is admitted into hospital for a hysterectomy.

#17 - An American Love Story (Part 6): It's My Job

Season 1999 - Episode 11 - Aired 11/4/1999

Bill struggles to overcome his drink problem, while daughter Cicily - now a graduate - begins her search for a job.

#18 - An American Love Story (Part 7): We Were Never Ozzie and Harriet

Season 1999 - Episode 12 - Aired 11/5/1999

In the conclusion to the series, Bill and Karen reflect on their courtship period during the 1960s.

#19 - Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows

Season 1999 - Episode 13 - Aired 11/6/1999

Canadian grappler Bret "the Hitman" Hart became a huge attraction on US cable TV, his "tough but nice" persona securing him a $9m deal. But, when he refused to compromise his image for the sake of commercial interests, he faced the end of his career. Paul Jay's acclaimed film follows Hart for a year and explores the reality behind the theatre of wrestling.

#20 - A Cry from the Grave

Season 1999 - Episode 14 - Aired 11/27/1999

Under the eyes of the United Nations, troops of the Bosnian Serb army massacred over 7,000 men from the town of Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. Leslie Woodhead 's film is the result of a year-long investigation into the killing and the aftermath of Europe's worst massacre since the Second World War.

#21 - Grey Gardens

Season 1999 - Episode 15 - Aired 12/11/1999

Despite their aristocratic background - and the fact that they were aunt and cousin to Jackie Onassis - Edith Bouvier Beale and daughter Edie lived in anonymity in a decaying mansion on New York's Long Island. But, in 1976, when Albert and David Maysies's film appeared in US cinemas, it gave the pair the fame they longed for - and the public a glimpse into the interdependency and private language of their eccentric lives.

#22 - Out of Phoenix Bridge

Season 1999 - Episode 16 - Aired 12/21/1999

For Ah Feng, Jialing, Xiazi and Ziao, their years working as maids while sharing a room in a Beijing slum may be the freest of their lives. In their rural home of Phoenix Bridge, the young Chinese women were under their parents' control; on their return, they will belong to new husbands. Struggling against harassment, they remain intent on achieving their dream: a metropolitan life.

#23 - The Last Cigarette

Season 2000 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/26/2000

A look at America's love-hate relationship with cigarettes over the course of the century.

#24 - My Best Fiend

Season 2000 - Episode 2 - Aired 3/18/2000

Biographical documentary directed by Werner Herzog, about his turbulent relationship with long-time collaborator Klaus Kinski. Herzog recalls the actor's brilliant yet troubled personality, and revisits Peru, where the pair first worked together on "Aguirre, Wrath of God".

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

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