“It Was Like Early Reality TV”: Channel 4 Orders History Doc ‘Britain’s Human Zoos’ On Shocking Victorian Entertainment Practice
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Channel 4 has ordered Britain’s Human Zoos, a doc about a shocking but forgotten Victorian era entertainment practice.
The doc will likely air on the UK network later this year, and we hear active discussions are underway with a buyer in the U.S., with a Hollywood studio player understood to be interested.
The shocking exposé will see acclaimed Somali-British author Nadifa Mohamed investigate the stories of the people brought to Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to appear in exhibitions called ‘human zoos.’ The pastime was hugely popular in the UK, Europe and U.S.
as a forum where people from western colonizers could see Black and Brown people for the first time. Many members of the zoos were transported from their homelands under dubious circumstances to be used as a form of entertainment, many more were subject to psuedo-scientific studies and their stories largely untold and unknown to most people today. “It was like early reality TV,” Mohamed told Deadline. “Fifty per cent of the British population saw them at their height.
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