Can we have a thread to share interesting and preferably old-ish TV documentaries? Anything goes! Please share.

[Snooks1971]

I love a documentary that you can only see on YouTube. I’m into 1970s ones atm. Then the algorithm goes so narrow and ONLY shows me 70s docs. I need to see more…
I like the BBC Archive ones.
During lockdown I watched an 80s Boarding School documentary but I’ve been unable to find it since.
Can we share good ones?

Here’s one of mine, love Olly Reed

What made it worse I think it was station staff who pointed the men towards the young boy he was 13 and from Glasgow.

There’s a series on BBC iPlayer at the moment that has been made by clipping together old documentaries to demonstrate what life in Britain was like. There’s no voice over, just text that pops up on screen to give random bits of context. It starts in the 70s and goes to the 2000s.

It’s called “Shifty”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002d2jy

Not strictly a documentary but Dennis Potter's final interview is a piece of TV that made an impression on me at the time.

The Secret History of our Streets - BBC, at least some are on YouTube. The one I remember best is the one about Deptford because that's an area I know slightly.

David Olusoga's marvellous series A House Through Time. There are several. The most recent (from last year, I think) traced the history of various people and families living in flats in Berlin and London in the run up to WW2 and afterwards. The other series are all about the people who lived in an individual house in various British cities over the centuries.

London life it's from the 50s/60s it shows street scenes and it's interesting to see the clothes worn.
Maybe of interest to Londoners.
I watched it for seeing the fashion of the time.

Seven Up. The early ones are the best.

If I'm not mistaken Ken Burns also did fantastic series about the American Civil War and the Vietnam War too which are well worth a watch and very informative.

Also, check out the BBC Storyville series on iPlayer. In particular an episode called 'Three Minutes: A Lengthening' ... this is both wonderful (in its clever meticulous research and piecing together, and bringing back to life, the story of a destroyed, murdered community bar a tiny number of survivors (at the time this was made, they may have passed on now) and incredibly, gut wrenchingly affecting because just 3 minutes of film is all that remains of a Jewish community. It's one of those extremely poignant documentaries - and a memorial too - which stay with you. Throughout this episode that 3 minute film repeatedly plays but never becomes boring as the people it features are brought to life.

Storyville - if you aren't aware of it - tends to document quite obscure subjects but that's why I find it so interesting as it introduces you to things you probably didn't know about and/or think about prior.

@catsmother yes, I've seen the Civil War one, and also one on Prohibition. I didn't know he did one on the Vietnam War.

Have you seen this, it’s not an easy watch.

There was a boarding school documentary about Radley School in the 80s. I watched it at the time because I lived nearby and was interested.

Yes it was. It was in 2 parts and the 2nd part centred on the murder of one of the runaways. His body was found in a roadside ditch fairly local to me. Poor lad.

People's Century, made in the late 90s

I’ve never forgotten the documentary about Irish twins Katie & Eilish Holton, who were conjoined twins. It was incredibly moving.

It's not by Ken Burns but with a very similar rigour (and is fascinating, especially at the moment...) - Eyes on the Prize is about the US Civil Rights movement

I loved ‘The Flight of the Condor’. It was about wildlife in the Andes and was so relaxing and chilled, as was its signature music of Peruvian pan pipes. As far as I know it’s never been released on streaming or DVD.

I love the farm series, so Victorian Farm, Wartime Farm - there’s quite a few. Some are on Amazon Prime.

The presenters are fantastic and it unveils all sorts of social, agricultural and technological history.

The idea is they live at a farm for a whole calendar year but it’s not at all reality TV like, they just get on with stuff whilst not disguising what is really hard to master.

I liked Adam Curtis Can't Get You Out of My Head - it has voice over and montage.

It's like a deja vu, remembering I once knew this about power, then got on about my (mundane) media filled life and forgot.

Shifty is also good - as a body of work I think they encapsulate the dual roles of media and finance that dominate our world and shape our lives in the most profound ways.

My favourite documentary ever: Phil Agland’s series about life in China, Beyond the Clouds. Absolutely brilliant, he had some fantastic characters and it’s beautifully shot and put together. On YouTube IIRC.

Don’t ever watch the crying rooms documentary

I’ve watched that, it’s horrific.

@EmeraldRoulette, I have a vague memory of such a documentary. If it is the one I’m thinking of, it was presented by Nick Robinson. In one episode, he explained that national insurance didn’t actually fund the NHS and went into the same pot as other taxes.

I’ve tried in vain. to trace a documentary I saw ages ago, possibly the 90s, which made a real impression on me. I think it was on bbc 2. From memory It was following a young female Jewish photographer, who was documenting the lives of older Jewish people in an area of London. An elderly subject developed an obsession with her and ended up killing her. It was a desperately sad and very bizarre story, which I’ve never forgotten.

A PP mentioned the documentary about Radley School. There was also a sort of companion piece about a comprehensive school, made in the early 1980s. I think it was called Kingswood. I think I'll look for it on YouTube.

There was also a brilliant documentary series called "Comrades" about the Soviet Union in the 1980s. A really fascinating look at the pre-perestroika era USSR.

The Up series was referred to above. The original is wonderful, but there were also some spinoff versions in other countries: Russia, the U.S., South Africa, and perhaps Japan. There could have been others as well. They went up to (I think) age 21 for the American version, 28 possibly for the Russian version, I'm not sure about the others. But they were all amazing, it's too bad the producers evidently discontinued the international series.

There was a brilliant documentary about adoption in the 80’s or 90’s. I remember a family who went from 0 to 3 kids and struggled, seemed really ill prepared for what a challenge three kids might be. Also a family where the mum and dad adopted two boys, who at the time of the documentary were young adults, and the family had broken down. The parents relationship was fractured as the dad maintained a relationship with the boys but the mum didnt. They were suing the local authority for withholding / not disclosing the full extent of the trauma on the boys which resulted in their behavioural issues. I’ve often wondered what happened next.