Louis meets the Phelps family — the people at the heart of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. The Phelps have rabid anti-homosexual beliefs, and often campaign at the funerals of American soldiers. They believe that every tragedy in the world is God's punishment for homosexuality.
Faced with the challenging behaviour of their kids, more and more parents in America are turning to psychoactive medication to help them cope, even though the drugs, and sometimes the diagnoses, remain controversial. Louis travels to one of America's leading children's psychiatric treatment centres, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to get to know the diagnosed children and hoping to understand what drives parents to put their kids on drugs.
Louis has gained access to Coalinga Mental Hospital in California, which houses more than 500 of the most disturbed criminals in America, convicted paedophiles. Most have already served lengthy prison sentences, but have been deemed unsafe for release. Instead, they have been sent here for an indefinite time. Spending time with those undergoing treatment, Louis wrestles with whether he can ever allow himself to believe men whose whole history is defined by deception and deceit.
Join Louis Theroux as he investigates the affect crystal meth addiction is having on the local community of Fresno in California's Central Valley.
Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the people most involved with driving the extreme end of the Jewish settler movement - finding them warm, friendly, humorous, and deeply troubling.
Renowned documentarian Louis Theroux dived into the BBC Archives and selected his favourite documentaries. Each of them had an impact on Louis and explains why he chose the documentaries and how they have inspired his work.. Covering a range of styles - some vérité-driven, others told more through interview - but in all of them you see life at its most raw, its most strange and therefore its most human.
For two weeks, Theroux visits the San Quentin State Prison.
Louis goes to South Africa where American tourists pay to hunt wild animals in privately owned reserves.
Louis stays with the residents of a soon to open brothel in Nevada for a few weeks.
In 1997, Louis Theroux made a documentary about the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles. 15 years later, he returns to find a business struggling with the deluge of free porn on the internet. Louis revisits some of the original programme's contributors as well as meeting the latest crop of porn performers dreaming of porn stardom.
Louis Theroux: Under the Knife is a TV documentary written and presented by Louis Theroux about the people and doctors involved in plastic surgery operations. Filmed mostly in the USA, in the programme, Louis himself ends up getting liposuction.
Louis Theroux travels to California to meet the man dubbed "the most dangerous racist in America"; Tom Metzger. Louis meets him, his family and his publicity manager as well as following him to skinhead rallies and on a visit to Mexico.
The programme follows Theroux as he travels to the United States to meet people who own animals normally found in Africa and Asia, including big cats and dangerous primates. In the programme, Theroux visits GW Exotic Animal Foundation in Oklahoma.
Following up on his 2007 documentary, The Most Hated Family in America, Louis Theroux returns to Topeka, Kansas, for a week-long visit with the Westboro Baptist Church. He again joins the Phelps family on their controversial pickets where they try to antagonise communities with offensive slogans and anti-gay placards. But four years on from Louis's last visit, there are signs of disarray in the Phelps clan. A series of defections of family members has shaken up the church.
The people profiled by Louis Theroux in the documentary series "When Louis Met..." reflect on their time with Louis and he gives his thoughts on them.
Louis Theroux sets out on a personal quest to meet the ultimate pop idol - Michael Jackson - and examine the often bizarre world that surrounded him and those that worshipped at his altar. The journey began in the summer of 2002 with a simple phone call to Uri Geller - a personal friend of Jackson's - to fix a meeting for Louis. What happened next resulted in a fantastical trek into a weird world of characters who orbited around the 'King of Pop'. Majestic Magnificent, Michael's personal magician, could be the gatekeeper to a meeting or just a fraud. Would Louis, a lifelong fan of Jackson, eventually meet his hero?
Louis Theroux travels to San Francisco where a group of pioneering medical professionals help children who say they were born in the wrong body transition from boy to girl or girl to boy at ever younger ages.
After being denied access to the Church of Scientology's headquarters, documentarian Louis Theroux teams up with ex-Scientology official Marty Rathbun to stage re-enactments of alleged abuses within the organization. Theroux soon discovers that the church is watching his every move.
Louis spends time at King's College Hospital in London where he immerses himself in the lives of patients in the grips of alcohol addiction and the medical staff trying to make them better.
Louis heads to Las Vegas, to reveal the world behind the myths of casino culture. Among the people he meets are two of the casino's 'high-rollers' and an employee who looks after them as well as a retired doctor who says she has gambled away $4million in seven years.
Louis visits one of America’s most crime-ridden cities in this installment of Law and Disorder.
Following on from his recent look at alcoholism, the UK’s premier documentarian returns with another sensitive film, this time on living with a brain injury. Earl’s personality and interests have radically altered since he was involved in a car crash, while Dan – who sustained his injury in the late 90s – is desperate to live independently again. Elsewhere, Amanda is struggling to readjust to family life, and Natalie’s carers share her especially affecting story.
Louis Theroux is in Lagos, following the local gangs and a paramilitary task force.
Louis Theroux travels to Johannesburg, where the residents find themselves increasingly besieged by crime as he looks at the issue of law and disorder.
Louis heads to California, the US adoption capital, where the majority of newborn adoptions are carried out privately, creating a multimillion dollar industry. Agencies, facilitators and lawyers can earn thousands of dollars per baby.
Sixteen years after his documentary When Louis Met Jimmy, Theroux seeks to understand how he was tricked by a man who became his friend.
Louis Theroux narrates a compilation of clips from his documentaries.
Anorexia, the pathological fear of eating and gaining weight, is now the most deadly mental illness in the UK, affecting around one in every 250 women. In this film, Louis Theroux embeds himself in two of London's biggest adult eating-disorder treatment facilities: St Ann's Hospital and Vincent Square Clinic. As he spends more time with patients both on and off the wards, he witnesses the dangerous power that anorexia holds over them, and finds himself drawn into a complex relationship between the disorder and the person it inhabits.
Louis Theroux heads to American college campuses and comes face-to-face with students whose universities are accusing them of sexual assault.
Louis Theroux visits specialist psychiatric units which treat mothers experiencing serious mental illness whilst allowing them to live alongside their babies.
Louis returns to visit the Westboro Baptist Church in the wake of the death of its leader.
Meet women in UK, legally providing sexual services, either to make a living or to supplement their income, potentially earning hundreds of pounds per hour.
This special sees Louis travel to America to investigate the story of a man who has become one of the most controversial and captivating icons of recent times: the gun-toting, self-described 'gay hillbilly' and 'Tiger King' Joe Exotic.
Louis is at Cedars Sinai Medical Centre in L.A to learn about the American way of death.
14 years after his first visit, Louis Theroux meets some of the growing community of religious-nationalist Israelis who have settled in the occupied West Bank.
Broadcast of the "Together for Palestine" charity concert organized by Brian Eno along with several artists to raise funds and awareness for Palestinian civilians affected by the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
With rare access and no holds barred, the acclaimed documentarian investigates a growing ultra-masculine network and its controversial influencers.
Louis Theroux spends some time with the eccentric broadcaster and charity fundraiser Sir Jimmy Savile and attempts to get behind the public persona.
A 90-minute special, broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall, London, celebrating Sir David Attenborough's groundbreaking career on the day of his 100th birthday.