Louis Theroux says BBC programme makers should stop “playing it safe”

nme.com:

Louis Theroux has criticised TV programme makers at the BBC for avoiding “difficult subjects” and “playing it safe”.Theroux, who is renowned for making cutting edge programmes and documentaries about controversial subjects, said there has been a welcome shift in mindset today so broadcasters such as the BBC are “more thoughtful about representation” and aware of “the need not to wantonly give offence”, which he said he was “fully signed up to”.“But I wonder if there is something else going on as well.

That the very laudable aims of not giving offence have created an atmosphere of anxiety that sometimes leads to less confident, less morally complex film-making,” he told the Edinburgh TV Festival (via BBC News).He added: “As a result, programmes about extremists and sex workers and paedophiles might be harder to get commissioned.”The corporation, he went on was “trying to anticipate the latest volleys of criticisms, stampeded by this or that interest group, avoiding offence”.Theroux added: “Often the criticisms come from its own former employees, writing for privately owned newspapers whose proprietors would be all too happy to see their competition eliminated.

And so there is a temptation to lay low, to play it safe, to avoid the difficult subjects.“But in avoiding those pinch points, the unresolved areas of culture where our anxieties and our painful dilemmas lie, we aren’t just failing to do our jobs, we are missing our greatest opportunities.

For feeling. For figuring things out in a benign and thoughtful way. For expanding our thinking. For creating a union of connected souls.“And what after all is the alternative?