On the Box: Louis Theroux: A Place for Paedophiles | Ashes to Ashes | Drinking with the Girls

Published on Friday 24 April 2009 16:13

LOUIS THEROUX: A PLACE FOR PAEDOPHILES BBC2 Sunday, 9pm ASHES TO ASHES BBC1 Monday, 9pm DRINKING WITH THE GIRLS BBC3 Tuesday, 9pm

A FEW years ago, backstage at a 1980s pop roadshow, I bumped into a forlorn and frustrated Louis Theroux. We were both in Brighton for the same reason: to interview acts who hadn't bothered the charts since the last of Joan Collins' Dynasty shoulder-pads had been floated out to sea and blown up. But while Spandau Ballet, ABC, Toyah Willcox and the rest were happy – and probably contractually obliged – to speak to me to help shift tickets for the Scottish leg of the tour, they had been reluctant to play ball for Theroux, who was specialising in documentaries about semi-retired entertainers having difficulty coming to terms with not being very famous any more.

I don't remember that roadshow doc getting onto our screens. Most likely, I decided that Theroux had painted himself into a corner because his soft targets had rumbled his faux-nave style and were no longer prepared to portray themselves as silly or sad for him. I wrote him off.

Wrongly, as it turns out, because he's swapped fluffy features for front-page news. Every film he makes now is more hard-hitting than the one that went before. Last year he investigated trophy-hunting American tourists too lazy to stalk their prey so it's arranged on the South African veldt for them. He followed that by donning a bulletproof vest to hang out with desperate drug-dealers in the city they call "Killadelphia". Last week, and in a snug Sunday night slot as well, he gave us A Place For Paedophiles.

Coalinga isn't a hotel in California but it's a lovely place (such a lovely place) full of the kind of creature comforts that make the hanging's-too-good-for-them lobby spit. It's not strictly a prison but the "residents" complain it might as well be: they can check out any time they like but they can never leave.

Within these (pastel-shaded) walls, everyone is a sex offender. The recognised route out of Coalinga is to participate in the therapy programme, but only 30% do, the rest being convinced it's a sham to keep them incarcerated. There's more chance of getting out by raising a legal action. In 10 years, though, only 13 have ever rejoined the society that despises them.

Getting out is where the real problems begin. We met Mr Lamb (it's a surnames-only institution) who in his bid to become release No 14 has had 1,100 housing applications turned down. Nimbys harangue potential landlords; one had rattlesnakes left on his porch.

Theroux listened sympathetically. He didn't flinch when told the gruesome details of the crimes. And he didn't judge. Facing TV cameras for the first time, Coalinga's patients sweated under the lights. Or maybe they always sweat. They looked like how you expected them to look, and sounded as plausible and persuasive as you feared they've always been.

You may not have wanted to think about paedophiles last Sunday – how many viewers, I wonder, opted for the mid-evening alternative they're convinced that National Turn-off TV Day was invented for: Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps? – but A Place For Paedophiles certainly made you think. It asked why you believed in rehabilitation for convicted murderers but not, apparently, for child molesters.

Everyone seemed to have been too long in Coalinga. The therapists saw "aggression" in the patients where none existed. The patients, whether they'd submitted to the treatment or not, conversed in therapy-speak. If prisons brutalise those on either side of the bars then so does this place, albeit in tasteful colours.

It's obvious they don't get many visitors. Without appearing to try too hard, Theroux elicited revealing responses from the patients (Mr Lamb: "I'd be thrilled to tell you the details of my crimes"). He also spotted a questionable drawing on the exemplary Mr Rigby's wall which the therapists seemed to have overlooked. But I should give him proper credit for this courageous film. At one point he referred to himself as a journalist. I'd never heard him say that before, but that is what he is.

Only three-fifths of the original Spandau Ballet were present for that nostalgia-fest in Brighton – I got off lightly. But now the New Romantic fools have reformed the "classic" line-up, and for this we should probably blame Ashes To Ashes, in which you're never more than five minutes away from a dusted-down 1980s choon.

As charges go this is pretty trumped-up, but isn't that Gene Hunt's game? Nick the suspect within easiest reach and make the crime fit back at the station. The formula for this Life On Mars spin-off is quite similar. Take a hit show and drop it into a different decade, giving the impression it has just fallen off the back of a lorry. Chuck in some funny hairstyles among the bog-standard pop-culture references, and if the Drama Police come round asking questions, tell them where they can shove their "credibility issues".

The charge against Ashes To Ashes is that it impersonates a hit time-travelling cop series without due care and attention to either the new timespan, or the original's flair. The second run began with Falklands War footage, made one reference to feminism and another to the police becoming more accountable. That was it. For the rest of the episode we were expected to be carried along by the music, by glimpses of Keeley Hawes as Alex Drake running while done up like Mel & Kim's posh cousin with a Farrah Fawcett flick, and by her constant bickering with Gene (Philip Glenister) who's now nothing more than a walking wisecrack. "Have you ever been in love, Mr Hunt?" he was asked. "Well, there was the time Wendy Barton let me put a frog down her knickers…"

In the grimly fascinating documentary Drinking With The Girls, Cherry Healey went on an almighty bender with seven different categories of female boozer. If the underagers make it to grannyhood, they can look forward to cracking open the ros for elevenses and forgetting names ("Is it Sherry, like the drink?"). But given that at 14 they're already sucking neat vodka through a straw ("It gets you drunk even quicker") they probably won't.