Louis Theroux - Episode Guide

Intrepid TV host Louis Theroux reveals the inside story of day-to-day life in one of America's largest legal brothels. Over six weeks of a summer, Louis moved in with Lance and Susan, the brothel owners, and the working girls at the newly opened Wild Horse Resort and Spa, Reno, in the state of Nevada. As he quickly becomes entwined in the lives of the prostitutes, Louis soon realises that it's not only the men who are paying a price for sex. The early enthusiasm of 19-year-old new girl Emily - who insists she's just in it for the sex - rapidly dwindles as the days go by. Belle, who is 21 but looks 12, has become a favourite amongst the paedophiles that visit the house, and Haley, perhaps the brightest and the most complex of the working girls, struggles with alcoholism as she contemplates a life outside prostitution. But for owners Lance and Susan, the four million dollar bordello is the realisation of a dream. The two met when Susan worked as a prostitute and Lance became one of her regular clients. They hope they've created a house of love, providing unsurpassed luxury and service, but also a place that offers the girls an opportunity to develop a life beyond a career in prostitution. In Louis's typical style, the documentary is non-judgemental, amusing and all the more revealing for its gentle prodding. What is uncovered raises questions and challenges preconceptions about the world's oldest profession.

Genial TV host 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 self-proclaimed 'King of Pop'. Majestic Magnificent, Michael's personal magician, could be the gatekeeper to a meeting or just a fraud. Michael's father, Joe Jackson, ended up throwing Louis out of his hotel room for asking the wrong question. Then there was Geller, who fixed an interview for Martin Bashir, but could he fix one for Louis? The film reveals just how tenacious Louis was in pursuit of a subject he was passionate about: hours spent in freezing conditions outside a hotel in Berlin; a journey to an awards ceremony in Vienna where he discovered that Jackson never turned up; trips back and forth to America in the hope of tracking down possible leads.Would Louis, a lifelong fan of Jackson, eventually meet his hero?

Louis travels to California to mix with the White Aryan Resistance, including 11-year-old twin sisters who have been taught to sing racist pop songs by their mother.

Louis Theroux heads to Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in America, to take a look at the pastime that made it famous and meet the gamblers, the high rollers and the casino men who keep this town in the middle of the desert green with money.

The Las Vegas Hilton is Louis's home over the course of one very memorable long weekend. Once the biggest hotel in the world, it is old school Vegas with a face-lift; this is the casino where Elvis played over eight hundred sold-out shows.

We meet Richard Wilk, the Hilton's smooth-talking 'super host' who prides himself on his ability to say yes to his clients. Louis hangs out with Richard's high-rolling 'whales'. Whales like Allan, who flies in from Canada to party in a 25,000 dollar suite, ready to blow 200,000 dollars or more over the weekend.

Louis makes his way past the dancing girls and flashing lights to find Martha, a glamorous septuagenarian who spends at least 1,000 dollars a day on the slots. She hasn't missed a day in ten years and has lost 4 million dollars.

And there's John and Tim, Vegas regulars who take Louis under their wing as he nervously gambles his own money on one long night on the black jack table. They walk away at 5am - but are they winners?

Louis Theroux struggles to come to terms with the infamous Phelps family from Topeka, Kansas who picket the funerals of dead soldiers killed in Iraq as a protest against an America that tolerates homosexuality.

The family members - some as young as 6 years old - wave slogans with messages such as 'God Hates Fags', 'Thank God for 9/11' and 'God Hates You' at pickets all over the States. The last documentary film maker to enter their world was so enamoured by The Phelps he joined them. What does the future hold for Louis as he meets America's Most Hated Family?

Louis Theroux pulls back the folds of plastic America and gets under the skin of the plastic surgery patients that crowd the clinics of Beverly Hills. Louis becomes a part of the plastic surgeon's daily lives, joining them for their consultations and operations in the search for everlasting youth. As Louis tries to understand the motivations of the patients lining the streets of America, he begins to wonder if he too might be a candidate for a nip tuck.

Another chance to see the BAFTA award winning presenter travelling to northern California to visit America's notorious San Quentin State Prison.

Built in 1852, San Quentin is one of America's oldest prisons and suffers from chronic overcrowding. Although famous for its death row the prison's main task is to house a transient population of 3,000 murderers, sexual predators and small-time criminals.

Louis spends two weeks with these inmates and quickly discovers that they inhabit a strange world within a world with its own rules and its own brutal code of conduct.

He meets amongst others David Silva who is serving 521 years and 11 life sentences and is locked down for 23 hours a day. Silva's crimes as he describes them 'would never be forgotten' and he talks of how he faces up to the prospect of never leaving prison.

Louis meets Deborah and Rob a transgender couple who live like husband and wife and how Deborah feels that after 20 years of continual offending, San Quentin now feels like home.

Louis travels to Limpopo Province to stay in a hunting lodge. Hunting in South Africa has become easier than ever before - in fact, it is a blossoming tourist industry. The cost of a trophy animal ranges from as little as $250 for a baboon to as much as $70,000 for a rhino. The animals are bred to purpose on private game farms. In fact, lion breeder Piet insists that hunting, by putting an economic value to the animal, has allowed populations of exotic species to flourish.

Louis Theroux joins the Philadelphia Police Department patrolling the most dangerous part of one of the most violent cities in America.

With gun carrying drug dealers on every corner, it is now normal for the centre of Philadelphia to stage 30 or 40 homicides a month. Embedded within the Philly rapid response teams, Louis feels a palpable sense of adrenalin mixed with frustration as police and the drug dealing 'corner boys' take each other on night after night. Here is a community desperate for protection but unwilling to talk to the law enforcers for fear of street retribution.

Louis senses a society trying to contain a lawlessness born out of poverty and disaffection. There's mistrust on all sides, although over time Louis sees a complex picture evolve - there are cops and robbers, guns and violence, but also an understanding between both sides. They are all part of 'The Game' which plays itself out night after night between the community and the cops given the task of policing it.

Louis Theroux travels to Johannesburg, where the residents find themselves increasingly besieged by crime. Despairing of the capability of the police and the courts to protect them, many have turned to an industry of private security, offering protection for a price. Are the sometimes brutal methods of these private police really a solution or just another part of the problem?

The first stop for Louis is a meeting with William Mayangoni, the local co-ordinator for a security firm known as Mapogo. Based on the outskirts of Diepsloot, one of the squatter camps that ring Johannesburg, William investigates thefts for his mainly white clients. When he catches a suspect, he gives them 'medicine': the alleged offender is beaten with a leather whip known as a sjambok.

Although his clients seem to support what they see as 'an African solution to an African problem', William's methods alienate the people of Diepsloot. Finally, their patience snaps dramatically, and William has to call out the real police in order to protect himself from the vicious threat of the mob.

In the centre of Johannesburg, a security company called Bad Boyz work in an area called Hillbrow, notorious for its high crime rate. Louis meets company director Hendrik De Klerk who explains that much of their activity involves reclaiming and securing buildings that have been taken over, or hijacked, by criminal gangs who illegally take rent from tenants. Louis watches dramatic evictions unfold, in which the police and security companies are not afraid to use force to kick out the protesting residents.

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.

Central Valley, California, is home to some of the most impoverished rural towns in America, where crystal meth addiction is prolific. In Fresno, Louis finds a community ravaged by this cheap and highly addictive drug.

As he infiltrates the town, he experiences the reality of meth abuse, as addicts who are high (or 'tweaking', as it is known) invite him into their homes to see them take hit after hit of their favourite drug. Louis becomes surrounded by the madness of daily addiction and the meth-addled confusion which is breaking this community apart.

He sees its impact through the eyes of the local police, and meets Diane and Karl, a couple who have sustained their marriage despite a 25-year meth addiction and losing custody of their five children. He witnesses arrests of sons doing meth with their mothers, and family after family broken apart from generations of meth abuse.

At the Westcare residential centre, Louis sees the work being done to combat the destruction caused by the drug. Run by ex-addicts, it offers a six-month rehab programme. He witnesses the extraordinary challenges they face dealing with meth-addicted families - babies born already hooked, with mothers caring for them while attempting to kick their own habit too.

Addiction is laid bare as Louis seeks out the stories and the people behind the drug.

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 meets Hugh, a 10-year-old who has been diagnosed with ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, Asperger's syndrome and bipolar disorder. Moving in with Hugh and his family, Louis learns more about his controversial diagnosis and gets to know a family where even the dog is on meds.

He also meets Jack, aged six, a child who has been excluded from school for his explosive behaviour and who now takes antidepressant medication for his anxiety. And when 15-year-old Kaylee (diagnosed with ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder) takes a day off her medication, Louis gets a glimpse of what life is like without the drugs.

From 'med checks' to 'personal pharmacies', Louis explores the world of psychiatric medication for kids, attempting to find the line between ordinary bad behaviour and pathology, and answer the question of whether the latest pharmaceuticals are taking the place of old-fashioned parenting.

On the streets of Lagos, it is not the police who wield power but gangs of fight-hardened young men known as Area Boys. Louis spends time with several outfits, joining them as they patrol their turf, clash with local rivals and keep the peace in a brutal and haphazard fashion. The main income for the Area Boys is an arbitrary and unofficial form of taxation, extracted from local businesses and commercial drivers. Louis gets to know the rich and glamorous Area Boy leader MC, a former street youth himself, who has now become a friend of the most powerful men in the city. Taken under MC's wing, Louis experiences the top levels of the Area Boys' world from the inside, complete with a tour of MC's grand residence and extensive shoe collection, and ending in a chaotic mini-riot with gunshots, blood and mayhem.

On the side of the law, Louis rides with KAI, the government's Kick Against Indiscipline paramilitary task force, as they storm different city districts. With bulldozers and arrest warrants, KAI use their own strong-arm tactics, and are in their way as feared as the Area Boys.

In Law and Disorder in Lagos, Louis wrestles with life in a world in which the forces of law and the forces of disorder are not always readily distinguishable and nothing is quite what it seems.

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.

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.

Louis spends time in one of the most notorious sections of Miami County Jail: the fifth and sixth floor of 'Main Jail', where many of the most volatile inmates are incarcerated.

Held in large cage-like dwellings for up to 24 men, the inmates have developed a strange and violent jail culture. The men - who remain in the cells almost all the time and may only leave for yard time twice a week - live under the sway of a gladiatorial code. They fight each other for food, for status, and often just to pass the endless hours of confinement. Trips to the infirmary are a frequent occurrence as inmates are viciously attacked and beaten, but the guards say they are powerless to end the abuse.

Louis concludes his exploration into Miami Mega-jail, one of America's largest and most violent of jails, a holding pen for almost 6,000 unconvicted inmates.

Louis goes deeper into the jail system, meeting an alleged triple murderer facing a possible death sentence. He also follows a group of forty or so younger inmates who have escaped prison by pleading guilty and agreeing to attend a four-month military-style boot camp. Among them is a 14-year-old boy facing a possible ten-year sentence for armed robbery if he can't survive the boot camp's relentless and brutal training and indoctrination programme. Many will drop out and receive prison sentences, but for a handful this will be their second chance at life.

According to some reports, there are now more tigers in captivity in the US than in the wild in the whole of Asia, as well as large numbers of lions, bears and chimpanzees.

Travelling to America's heartlands, Louis Theroux spends time with an Oklahoma man who has bred and collected over 150 tigers, visits the woman who privately owns one of America's largest collections of chimpanzees, and finds himself in uncomfortably close contact with a number of big cats and dangerous primates.

Louis visits one of the best schools in America for autism. He meets the students and their families to get a glimpse of what life is like for them and to experience the pleasures and the strains of one of the most extraordinary kinds of relationship.

Louis travels to Phoenix, Arizona - the capital of dementia care. He spends time at Beatitudes, a residential institution, and also with those looking after loved ones at home to try to understand the struggle of living in a world of encroaching shadows - and of keeping relationships alive in circumstances that can be among the strangest and most challenging imaginable.

In 1997, Louis Theroux made a documentary about the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles. Fifteen 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 performers dreaming of porn stardom

Louis immerses himself in the world of Ohio's state psychiatric hospitals, meeting patients who have committed crimes - at times horrifically violent - while in the grip of severe mental illness. They have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered by the courts to secure psychiatric facilities to receive the treatment that it is hoped will, one day, lead to their reintegration back into society.

In the first of two episodes, Louis spends time with patients attempting to come to terms with their crimes and the clinicians entrusted with helping to make them safe. And he investigates the difficult question - when is a patient with a serious crime in their past ready to be returned to the outside world?

Louis immerses himself in the world of Ohio's state psychiatric hospitals, meeting patients who have committed crimes - at times horrifically violent - while in the grip of severe mental illness. They have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered by the courts to secure psychiatric facilities to receive the treatment that it is hoped will, one day, lead to their reintegration back into society.

In the second episode of this two-part series, Louis spends time with patients whose personalities are so intertwined with their illness that it makes them more difficult to treat. In doing so, he examines the grey area between criminal actions and medical symptoms, and investigates how we define insanity.

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.

At the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at UCSF Hospital Louis meets children who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Louis is told that children as young as three can show signs of rejecting the gender they were assigned at birth, leaving parents with a difficult dilemma - do they start transitioning a child who is still developing their own identity or do they wait and risk making the change once their body has gone through the transformations of puberty?

It is a decision that can be the start of a complex series of medical interventions, from puberty blockers to hormone replacement therapy and eventually gender reassignment surgery. Louis spends time with children and their families as they negotiate their way along this life-changing journey.

Louis Theroux spends time at King's College Hospital in London - a specialist liver centre - where he immerses himself in the lives of patients in the grips of alcohol addiction and the medical staff trying to make them better.

Most people associate addictions with illegal substances, but it's alcohol which is the most common addiction in the UK.

Many of us drink - sometimes more than we ought to - but the patients Louis meets at King's are drinking far more than normal, sometimes to the point of self-destruction. Louis explores the effects this is having on the patients' lives and the consequences for their loved ones when drinking loses the social aspect and becomes a potentially fatal compulsion.

It's hard to know why people become addicted to alcohol and why it is impossible for some to stop drinking, even when it is killing them. To outsiders it may seem like an easy decision, but it is nowhere near that simple. Louis spends time with patients and their families as they struggle to find a way out of their addiction to alcohol before it's too late.

An estimated one million people in the UK are living with the long-term effects of a brain injury. In A Different Brain, Louis takes a look at the issues that some of them have to deal with

Louis spends time with staff and service users at the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust, one of the UK's largest providers of neuro-behavioural rehabilitation, in an effort to understand how individuals and their families come to terms with this life-changing condition.

Often called a 'hidden disability' because those affected can show little physical signs of change, individuals with Acquired Brain Injury face enormous cognitive, behavioural and personality challenges. Those affected are left to reconstruct who they are - from relearning the basics of walking, talking and eating, to redeveloping complex personality and behavioural traits, often in the shadow of who they once were. Family members are often caught between grieving for the loved one they've lost and learning to love the person they are now.

In light of the unmasking of Jimmy Savile as a predatory sex offender, and 15 years on from the BBC documentary When Louis Met Jimmy, Louis Theroux sets out to understand how a man who was at the centre of British entertainment and charitable fund-raising for decades was able to get away with a long litany of crimes.

In this reflective 75-minute film, Louis talks to some of Savile's victims, to people who worked closely with him, and re-examines moments from the original film as well as footage that's never aired before on television.

In 1999 and 2000, Louis spent about two weeks, spread out over a number of months, filming with the man then merely known as an eccentric and enigmatic television and radio personality with a passion for charity work and an obscure private life. In that original documentary Louis succeeded in showing a different side of Savile, asking him about the rumours of paedophilia, the question of his sexual interests, and stories about his run-ins with the police while running nightclubs in the 60s.

For several years after the show went out, Louis continued to be fascinated by Savile and they maintained a friendly relationship. But the darkest side of this deceptive man eluded him.

Now, to gain a deeper understanding of how Savile was able to use his celebrity status to commit his abuse for decades, Louis meets victims and several people that knew him but have not spoken out in a this way before. Louis attempts to build a clearer picture of how Savile was perceived, both then and now, by those with whom he came into contact, and learn how those that knew him either hold on to their memories or have the task of reappraising that part of their life.

With the power of hindsight, Louis examines his own conscience and raises some challenging questions, to consider how he himself, the press, institutions Savile worked with, and society as a whole can make sense of their failings and learn from the past.

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 at some point in their lives.

In recent years, the number of people being admitted to hospital because of their condition has risen dramatically. With many struggling to make a full recovery, being diagnosed with the eating disorder can sometimes mean a life-long battle.

This film sees Louis Theroux embed himself in two of London's biggest adult eating-disorder treatment facilities: St Ann's Hospital and Vincent Square Clinic. He meets women of all ages and at various stages of their illness, accompanying them through an enforced daily routine of scheduled eating, weigh-ins and group therapy sessions.

As he spends more time with patients both on and off the wards, he witnesses the dangerous power that anorexia holds over them, leaving some unsure about whether recovery is achievable or even wanted. And as Louis seeks to understand what lies behind this mysterious illness, he finds himself drawn into a complex relationship between the disorder and the person it inhabits.

Louis Theroux is in America to interview members of the Church of Scientology - but they do not want to speak with him. So he meets disaffected former members of the controversial organisation and uncomfortably recreates some extreme experiences. All the while, Louis is being oddly shadowed by people who might be the very folk he wouldn't mind having a word with...

At a time of increased scrutiny about what constitutes sexual assault, award-winning documentary-maker Louis Theroux heads to American college campuses and comes face-to-face with students whose universities are accusing them of sexual assault.

As reports of sexual violence have dramatically increased in recent years, the government has urged US colleges to enforce a stricter code of sexual conduct amongst students. Employing specialist administrators to carry out investigations into alleged misdemeanors, they now have the power to permanently exclude those they deem ‘responsible'. For the victims of sexual assault these new processes, which require less stringent levels of proof than criminal cases, have allowed accusations that might have never been heard in a court of law to be vindicated. But alleged perpetrators believe the attempt to be more vigilant about rape and assault has turned into an overreaction that tramples on due process, and harms innocent people.

At the start of this journey, Louis meets a neuroscience major called Saif Khan, who has been accused of raping a fellow student. His university is investigating the claims separately even though Saif has been found not-guilty in a court of law. Though Saif continuously pleads his innocence, Louis is drawn into an increasingly complex world, where separating fact from fiction becomes increasingly challenging.

He also meets young women whose claims of sexual assault have previously fallen on deaf ears, who believe that a new approach to handling allegations of sex crimes is not only necessary but long overdue. One such student is Mollie Johnson, whose experience is a powerful reminder that there is now a broader understanding of what sexual assault looks like.

Louis Theroux visits specialist psychiatric units which treat mothers experiencing serious mental illness whilst allowing them to live alongside their babies.

Thirteen years since first encountering one of America's most notorious hate groups, award-winning film-maker Louis Theroux makes a long-anticipated return to Kansas to spend time with the Westboro Baptist Church - a hugely-controversial Christian ministry that for years has picketed at military funerals and other high-profile events with deliberately provocative and homophobic placards. Immersing himself in the strange world of Westboro, Louis explores what happens when a hate-group largely populated by one family loses its patriarch.

Louis Theroux meets the women legally participating in the new sexual economy, exploring whether selling sex can ever be a healthy way to make money.

A decade on, Louis revisits Joe Exotic - 'gay hillbilly', convicted felon and cult figure. He digs deep into Joe's background, meets Carole Baskin and asks what made the Tiger King.

Louis Theroux spends time with the growing community of Israeli religious-nationalist settlers. Their settlements are illegal under international law, and they have been protected by the army, the police and the Israeli government.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed, there has been an acceleration in the establishment of settlements, with settlers pursuing a campaign of violence against local Palestinian communities.

What was once a fringe movement has now won support at the highest levels of government, with their supporters holding key positions in the cabinet and able to influence not only the role the military plays but also the future of this conflict.

Louis Theroux embeds himself in the West Bank, meeting prominent settlers - including the ‘godmother' of the movement, Daniella Weiss - and travelling throughout the territory to understand the consequences of their activity. Louis also meets Palestinians whose lives have been impacted by settlers moving into their communities. As the world focuses on Gaza, where at least 50,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed by Israeli forces since 7 October, Louis discovers that the settlers are already making plans to move into that territory, too.