Louis Theroux in Philadelphia - Sunday

I thought this was brilliant, one of his best in a long time. Thank god I dont have to live in that place. gooseberry fool is real yo.

dawg San Andreas is real fo sho brrrap

It was good, but maybe in a bit of a voyeuristic way really, didn't really show us anything the wire hadn't already shown, and I know Louis is famed for his faux-naive interviewing style but I just cringed at half the stuff he came out with, particularly his attempts to show how liberal and down with the kids he was when he (mildly) challenged the cops. Under the circumstances I could understand the cops thinking 'who is this limey jerk?' If the Bunk had been there, you think he'd have stood for that pussy ass bullshit? Hell no, mummy strawberry floater.

Philadelphia needs Sheriff John Burnell.

pretentious moi wrote:It was good, but maybe in a bit of a voyeuristic way really, didn't really show us anything the wire hadn't already shown, and I know Louis is famed for his faux-naive interviewing style but I just cringed at half the stuff he came out with, particularly his attempts to show how liberal and down with the kids he was when he (mildly) challenged the cops. Under the circumstances I could understand the cops thinking 'who is this limey jerk?' If the Bunk had been there, you think he'd have stood for that pussy ass bullshit? Hell no, mummy strawberry floater.

How DARE a proper UK documentary overlap material with a popular US cop show?

Don't get me wrong, the Wire is awesome by all accounts (not seen it, but have no reason to doubt the reviews) but to say a documentary somehow loses impact by showing that that actually happens is just absurd.

As always Louis was great. Very interesting but I feel he could have explored more as there was a lot to see. If the show had been on for 1 and a half hours it would have been better. Not as good as America's most hated family or his trip to Vegas but still essential tv.

pretentious moi wrote:It was good, but maybe in a bit of a voyeuristic way really, didn't really show us anything the wire hadn't already shown, and I know Louis is famed for his faux-naive interviewing style but I just cringed at half the stuff he came out with, particularly his attempts to show how liberal and down with the kids he was when he (mildly) challenged the cops. Under the circumstances I could understand the cops thinking 'who is this limey jerk?' If the Bunk had been there, you think he'd have stood for that pussy ass bullshit? Hell no, mummy strawberry floater.

The thing is, The Wire is a work of fiction (albeit, based on real situations). This brings it home. I'm not saying that Louis' documentary is infallible, but it certainly makes you think - as usual it doesn't have any obvious answers, it leaves the viewer to work things out, and that's why I appreciated it.

new*allusion wrote:

pretentious moi wrote:It was good, but maybe in a bit of a voyeuristic way really, didn't really show us anything the wire hadn't already shown, and I know Louis is famed for his faux-naive interviewing style but I just cringed at half the stuff he came out with, particularly his attempts to show how liberal and down with the kids he was when he (mildly) challenged the cops. Under the circumstances I could understand the cops thinking 'who is this limey jerk?' If the Bunk had been there, you think he'd have stood for that pussy ass bullshit? Hell no, mummy strawberry floater.

The thing is, The Wire is a work of fiction (albeit, based on real situations). This brings it home. I'm not saying that Louis' documentary is infallible, but it certainly makes you think - as usual it doesn't have any obvious answers, it leaves the viewer to work things out, and that's why I appreciated it.

No documentary does. If a documentary has an obvious answer then the subject doesn't deserve a documentary.

Skarjo wrote:

new*allusion wrote:

pretentious moi wrote:It was good, but maybe in a bit of a voyeuristic way really, didn't really show us anything the wire hadn't already shown, and I know Louis is famed for his faux-naive interviewing style but I just cringed at half the stuff he came out with, particularly his attempts to show how liberal and down with the kids he was when he (mildly) challenged the cops. Under the circumstances I could understand the cops thinking 'who is this limey jerk?' If the Bunk had been there, you think he'd have stood for that pussy ass bullshit? Hell no, mummy strawberry floater.

The thing is, The Wire is a work of fiction (albeit, based on real situations). This brings it home. I'm not saying that Louis' documentary is infallible, but it certainly makes you think - as usual it doesn't have any obvious answers, it leaves the viewer to work things out, and that's why I appreciated it.

No documentary does. If a documentary has an obvious answer then the subject doesn't deserve a documentary.

Yeah - that's my point. A documentary that claims to have all the answers is something to be avoided.

Well I enjoyed it, but was thinking the whole time "why not just put up some CCTV cameras and gooseberry fool?" wouldn't need the people's co-operation then. There I've just solved that whole problem.

Cameras can easily be torn down or stolen.

Look what happened to Herc's camera in The Wire.

chalkitdown wrote:Cameras can easily be torn down or stolen.

Yeah, but the people would be caught on tape doing so. Just make the punishment of vandalising cameras worse than that of killing people. They'd all soon stop destroying the cameras then.

Well, first of all I think these days people automatically think 'louis theroux - ooh, that'll be good.' He's got a reputation for making classy documentaries, and I think maybe it means these days he doesn't have to work too hard. What did you learn from that show? That it really is rough out there on the streets? Whoa, revelatory! The Wire comparison is valid, because although it's fiction, it's the work of a an ex-crime reporter and an ex-cop and it takes real life incidents from the city of Baltimore as inspiration. Arguably, it's more revealing than Theroux's documentary - he certainly didn't get ANYTHING out of the street kids he spoke to, they just wanted to show off in front of the camera. It was exciting watching the cops doing their thing, but when Louis does his conclusion at the end, where he basically suggests the cops efforts aren't going to do any good, it's like he's implicitly damning the system - but what else can anyone do?! It's like he's implying the situation is partially the cops fault because they're 'alienating' the locals. Which, I'm sorry, sounds like bollocks to me.

pretentious moi wrote:Well, first of all I think these days people automatically think 'louis theroux - ooh, that'll be good.' He's got a reputation for making classy documentaries, and I think maybe it means these days he doesn't have to work too hard. What did you learn from that show? That it really is rough out there on the streets? Whoa, revelatory! The Wire comparison is valid, because although it's fiction, it's the work of a an ex-crime reporter and an ex-cop and it takes real life incidents from the city of Baltimore as inspiration. Arguably, it's more revealing than Theroux's documentary - he certainly didn't get ANYTHING out of the street kids he spoke to, they just wanted to show off in front of the camera. It was exciting watching the cops doing their thing, but when Louis does his conclusion at the end, where he basically suggests the cops efforts aren't going to do any good, it's like he's implicitly damning the system - but what else can anyone do?! It's like he's implying the situation is partially the cops fault because they're 'alienating' the locals. Which, I'm sorry, sounds like bollocks to me.

I almost entirely disagree. Almost.

An actual documentary will always hold more clout than a fictionalised show. As I've said, though I've never watched The Wire itself, and though I'm aware of other shows than have fictionally brought real issues to light, to say that a documentary brings nothing new to the argument nor illustrates things that people were not otherwise aware of is not true.

I think he got quite a lot out of the people he interviewed. He illustrated something that I simply cannot relate to on any real level; an inablility to trust the police. In all of my experience, the police are a positive force. They do a job more difficult than most people think and put themselves in more danger than most people care to imagine. But there are places in society where the arrival of the police can be something of fear, and I think this documentary did show that. I genuinely don't know what it's like to think of the police as a negative force, and I think it's a fundamental point to address. Can you imagine living in a society where you genuinely do not trust, violently so, the people who are appointed to keep order? Most may think they do, but most would glady see the arrival of a cop car the second there might be trouble.

For all the blusterings of those who oppose the police (note; not directed at anyone who has commented so far) I will simply not listen to you unless you see the arrival of a police car at a crime scene a negative thing.

In general terms I agree with you about docs over tv shows, but The Wire is a pretty special case, and I think if you watched it you'd probably see my side. The doc, including the police distrust thing, didn't show me anything I hadn't already seen or read about. It's not that I hated it, just, y'know, let's not get carried away here!

Well, having not seen The Wire, or even heard of it for that matter, I enjoyed this. Gave an interesting look at Philadelphia and the problems that exist there. I'm looking forward to next week's episode as I have a friend from Johannesberg.

Watching that I didn't get the impression that the locals didn't trust the police, it was like they had their own little society, a small civilisation panned out in a city that, you could say (and probably exaggerate in doing so) the government forgot about. You know, the police are usually like the big brother who comes to sort everything out when things start to get a little messy, and you can rely on them to deal with whatever it is that's gone wrong.

In a place like that maybe they think that they can all fend for themselves and don't need this sort of protection. Drug dealing and crime are just part and parcel of life and it's how people make their own way to the top when the normal opportunities are arguably not afforded to them, and in that case the police don't even appear to be there for their own benefit.

Of course you can't really apply that to everyone and you can just repeat what that sergeant did, that you don't see the good people because they do what they're told. But even then maybe they have repressed feelings of being watched over by an overly authoritative police force but don't want to get in any trouble.

That could all be nonsense, mind.

I thoroughly enjoyed that

I was also kind of thinking

'wow this is like a dull, less in depth, documentary version of The Wire'

It was good but I don't think Louis really got anything out of the guys he spoke to and most of their responses where pretty much exactly what I was expecting.

The most interesting bit was with the kid who said he ran away because he was scared of cops/drive by shooting and the police seemed totally unsympathetic to his story while Louis thought he might be telling the truth.