The acclaimed documentarian – and widely-accepted national treasure – Louis Theroux has a new show on the way, but unlike many of his programmes it won’t focus on a specific subculture or individual topic. Instead, the four-part series will see him looking back over his own career, at a body of work spanning 25 years.
The BBC Two series will feature interviews with Louis himself, besides conversations with those that have featured in his documentaries in the past, giving an update on their lives and – on a broader scale – how the world has changed in the interim.
In part, it was lockdown that provided “the time and space” to work on the project, says Theroux, who has also used quarantine to start his own podcast.
“For years I’ve wanted to go back and make sense of the programmes I’ve made, find out what happened to some of the contributors, update their stories, and see what all these many hours of making TV might add up to,” he adds in a statement.
“It’s been a strange and fascinating couple of months working on this, and especially fun to dig through old episodes of Weird Weekends – programmes I made in the mid-nineties, when the world was a very different place. I think we’ve been able to make the whole add up to more than the sum of the parts and to bring out surprising themes and commonalities.”
“And, if nothing else, it was an interesting review of how my haircuts and glasses have changed over the years."
Recently, Theroux also talked to Dazed over Zoom about the art of documentary making, using his years of experience in the industry to offer tips to filmmakers just starting out. Watch the video below.
