TV Preview: Louis Theroux: Twilight of the Porn Stars | Britain in a Day | Dead Boss

A SEASONED director of pornographic films is milling around between scenes in a San Fernando Valley mansion, as his male star struggles to overcome a debilitating bout of stage-fright. “The penis is a very tricky animal,” he sighs, his words couched in hard-earned wisdom.

“It’s a mysterious organ,” concurs the polite young man from the BBC, who just happens to be making a documentary in the area.

Yes, Louis Theroux has returned to the LA porn scene, 15 years after a memorable visit during his reputation-making Weird Weekends series. And what he finds in LOUIS THEROUX: TWILIGHT OF THE PORN STARS is an industry in free-fall. A steep rise in piracy and free YouTube-style websites has had a devastating impact on filmmakers and performers alike, with some predicting that the adult entertainment industry as it stands simply won’t exist within five years time.

Whether you regard that as a disaster or not – and as usual, Louis doesn’t judge or censure, being more interested in matters psychological than political – one can’t help feeling sorry for likeable characters such as Tommy Gunn, a philosophical middle-aged performer who’s all but given up on his dreams of a stable family life after years on the porn treadmill.

Gunn’s every utterance is tinged with regret, despite his attempts to put a positive spin on things. At one point he’s glimpsed telling a wide-eyed young porn actress that life is shorter than she thinks. He’s obviously trying to save her from the empty existence he’s wrought for himself, but alas she isn’t listening. She has a scene to do.

Louis talks to other young performers such as Kagney, whose ambition to make enough money to be able to retire in a few years has led her into the more extreme end of the industry. Naturally, this has placed tremendous pressure on her relationship with her boyfriend, who appears to be entirely dependent on her income. Clearly uncomfortable with this situation – but apparently not quite enough to get a job himself – his strained presence answers one of Louis’ key questions: what must it be like to be in a relationship with a porn actor?

Elsewhere he explores the issue of whether there can ever be any genuine intimacy between porn performers, as well as the dehumanising effects of having sex with strangers for cash. He catches up with JJ, one of the stars of the first film, who reveals the devastating reasons behind his decision to get into the business (which he has since left), and traces the tragic story of John Dough, who since 1997 became increasingly addicted to crack, before finally committing suicide in 2007. His death haunts the film throughout.

Louis also reconvenes with Rob Black, whose hideously extreme films eventually landed him in prison on obscenity charges. Cutting a sad, wired and pathetic figure, he now makes relatively harmless films for the couples market, reflecting the industry’s desperate move into more romantic, almost sub-Mills-&-Boon fare. “Less porno!” yells a director at one point, when his lead actress gets slightly too carried away.

It’s a typically thoughtful and sensitive film, which also functions as a neat illustration of Louis’ maturation as a filmmaker. It’s hard to imagine him these days gamely dressing up as a Mountie for a background role in a porn film, as he did back in 1997. But while his documentaries may not be as “wacky” as they once were, they’re no less absorbing or acute.

A documentary of an altogether more sprawling hue is BRITAIN IN A DAY, in which Bafta-winning director Morgan Matthews (The Fallen, Scenes from a Teenage Killing) weaves a tapestry of everyday existence culled from almost 800 hours of raw footage. Filmed by ordinary people from all walks of life as part of a nationwide experiment on 12 November of last year, it’s a convincing snapshot of what it means to be alive in that it provides yards of boredom punctuated by fleeting pockets of interest. And it’s not half as profound as it thinks it is.

Returning to BBC3 four years after her critically-acclaimed sitcom Pulling was axed to make way for 17 more series’ of Two Pints of Lager, Sharon Horgan recovers her form with DEAD BOSS, a satisfyingly silly prison-set sitcom co-written with comedian Holly Walsh.

Beginning with a double-bill, it stars Horgan as Helen, a woman wrongly sentenced to 12 years in the chokey for the murder of her boss. Her thwarted efforts to clear her name and survive within this madhouse form the spine of a likeable farce, which, as directed by The League of Gentlemen’s Steve Bendelack, has a cartoonish quality vaguely redolent of that other (good) BBC3 sitcom, Ideal.

Merrily tweaking all the usual prison clichés, it’s populated by the likes of a leering Top Dog – notorious for once paper-cutting an inmate to death with a copy of TV Quick – and Jennifer Saunders as a faux-mumsy Governess. In fact the cast is uniformly strong, with Geoffrey McGivern proving particularly amusing as Helen’s hopeless lawyer.

It’s no Porridge, but Dead Boss still succeeds as an enjoyable streak of assured nonsense.

Paul Whitelaw

LOUIS THEROUX: TWILIGHT OF THE PORN STARS

Sunday, BBC2, 10pm

BRITAIN IN A DAY

Monday, BBC2, 9pm

DEAD BOSS

Thursday, BBC3, 10:30pm