Season 9

1990 · 14 episodes

Episodes

1Return To HiroshimaThe last time they gazed on Japan they were watching the most horrific single event in the history of war - the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima. Forty-five years later the American airmen who dropped the bomb return to see the city they annihilated. This remarkable film tells their story as they retrace wartime steps across the Pacific and come face to face with survivors of their nuclear attack.
2Our Reactor is on FireInvestigates the fire inside Reactor One at Windscale in October 1957, and the previous emissions and leaks of radiation that occured there, contaminating the area, in spite of denials from the authorities. Workers from the site at the time corroborate this and the programme considers the secrecy surrounding the events.
3ProstitutkiAs Gorbachev draws back the iron curtain, western ideas and lifestyles are changing the Soviet Union. Not all of them are positive: there is a growing vice industry in the country's major cities. Soviet police claim there are 10,000 prostitutes in Moscow alone. The shops are empty and most women's lives are unrelentingly drab; more and more young girls are drawn by the 'high life'. A foreign currency prostitute can earn 1,000 roubles for one 'trick' - five times the national monthly wage. Inside Story goes under cover with the police and the women themselves tell their story.
4The Race GameBlack sportsmen and women, wearing British colours, are winning more gold medals, setting new records and scoring more points, goals and runs than ever before. Some claim this is evidence of a natural black aptitude for sport. Others argue that sport provides the best opportunity for people often discriminated against. This revealing film challenges both views and asks: does the best man always win - whatever his colour?
5South Africa's Killing GroundThree thousand people have been killed in the Natal province of South Africa during the last three years in a bitter struggle for black political power. The fighting between the African National Congress and Inkatha, Chief Buthelezi's political organisation, threatens to destroy any prospect of peaceful change in South Africa. Using the emotional testimony of people caught up in the conflict, this film reveals a systematic campaign of violence by Inkatha, supported by the South African police.
6Beyond Reasonable DoubtThe Broadwater Farm riots and the murder of PC Keith Blakelock in October 1985 led to a ten-week trial and life sentence for three young men - Engin Raghip , Mark Braithwaite and Winston Silcott. All three convictions were based on uncorroborated confessions obtained by the police in the absence of solicitors. There were no witnesses and no forensic evidence. Charles Wheeler examines the murder investigation and the ensuing trial, and questions whether any of the three should have been convicted.
7RatcatchersMost of us shudder when we see a rat. Nearly all of us call for help. Ratcatchers are the men who come to answer our calls and soothe us. Those calls increased by 20 per cent last year. City rats live in our sewers. Here they multiply in a nice warm environment and we throw away an ever increasing amount of waste which sustains them and their young. From time to time they break out of the sewers bringing disease and destroying property. Some even appear in our toilet bowls.
8Men Of SteelTen years ago the workers at the Gdansk shipyard went on strike, an action that was to lead eventually to the fall of the Polish government. It was a long and bitter struggle, fraught with danger and personal sacrifice. From Gdansk, Inside Story uncovered secret police film and the strikers' own video record of those turbulent events.
9Incidental DeathOur Kev' says the fresh wreath laid year after year on her son's grave by a still bitter Phyllis Freeman. Kev was one of the 95 people who die every week on our roads. The driver was fined £400 for driving carelessly. Inside Story asks whether that is just.
10Doctors And TortureDoctors around the world are monitoring and participating in torture. Inside Story talks to them, to the tortured prisoners and to the campaigners risking their lives to clean up the medical profession.
11The ConfessionFor 18 years George Blake served as a senior MI6 officer. In 1952 he became a double agent, betraying MI6 operations and personnel to the KGB. Over nine years, during the critical period of the Cold War, he destroyed most of M16's activities in eastern Europe. His conviction in 1961 and spectacular escape bequeathed a legacy of speculation, intrigue and outrage - the stuff of a John Le Carre novel. But fiction gives way to fact in this unprecedented documentary. For the first time the KGB's most devastating agent in Britain answers his accusers - and reveals some astonishing secrets to reporter and producer Tom Bower.
12The Dream DealerHoward Marks was an underworld myth: drugs trafficker, fugitive and Oxford graduate famous for his impersonations of Elvis Presley. For years, he eluded the law. His wealth and charm were legendary. He was untouchable: a middle-class outlaw. He came to obsess and repel Craig Lovato of the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Lovato determined to track him down. The key would be Lord Moynihan, an exiled peer who ran massage parlours in steamy Asian cities. He was persuaded to betray his old friend Howard Marks by recording their private conversations on a hidden tape recorder. This would be a manhunt like no other.
13November Days: Voices and ChoicesDirected by the celebrated French film-maker, Marcel Ophuls , whose Oscar-winning film about notorious war criminal Klaus Barbie Hotel, Terminus was shown on BBC television last year. The programme started out as a documentary celebrating the disappearance of the Berlin Wall, but in the making it turned into a musical comedy about the peaceful revolution. The voices of the people who were astonished and overjoyed, the choices of their politicians who had to think fast as their world came crashing down. All these are interwoven with snatches from old songs, films and BBC news reports. And what commentary could be more relevant than Bing Crosby singing Irving Berlin's Song of Freedom, inspired by US President Roosevelt's 1941 message to Congress calling for freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
14The Maze: Enemies WithinA documentary containing rare footage inside Long Kesh in 1990. It includes interviews with many republican and loyalist prisoners at the time. Well worth having a look at this.