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The Guide #205: In an age of streaming clutter, why not rediscover Britain’s rich documentary past?

In this week’s newsletter: From Molly Dineen’s humane portraits to Channel 4’s wild experiments, the golden age of British TV documentaries offers more than the streamers’ endless banal choiceThe state of British TV documentary film-making is a little depressing at the moment. Open up the documentaries tab on iPlayer, Now, ITVX or Channel 4, and you’ll be assaulted by a rush of true crime docs, each with their own macabre/salacious title – Satan’s Au Pair, Catching the Frying Pan Killer, that sort of thing – and a little rectangular title card with said killer looking evil, preferably in a grainy black and white picture with a bloody thumbprint overlaid.And it if isn’t true crime you’re greeted with, it will be one of the other broadcaster-permitted forms of documentary these days: celebrity travelogues; largely unenlightening pop science docs about just how bad a certain type of food is for you; shameless corporate tie-ins where someone walks round a Haribo factory and gawps in wonder; tightly controlled famous-people profiles, where anything vaguely controversial or interesting has been sliced out of the final, interviewee-approved cut; or series about air fryers (Channel 5, we salute your unwavering commitment to this sub-genre). Continue reading...

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