Louis Theroux cut his teeth as a reporter on
Michael Moore's TV Nation, and his four-part series of Weird Weekends (BBC2,
9.30pm) is a homage to Moore's journalistic style: find a group of nutters,
pander a little to their jovial insanity, join in with their more extreme
behaviour, and keep the camera rolling at all times.
Theroux's putative
quest in the first programme is to be born-again, and since three quarters of
Dallas/Fort Worth's four million inhabitants have already taken that tricky
step, he's come to the right place. He makes a promising start with the
receptionist at the mission building of televangelist Marcus Lamb (a woman who
ends phone conversations with the winning phrase `Angels on your body') she
offers to baptise Theroux in Christ when he's barely got his cameraman through
the door. He gets even closer to rapture with an Iwo Jima veteran called Randy
whose disseminated entirely through the means of bumper stickers. He joins The
Family, an evangelical group who save souls in Dallas's red-light district
through bad guitar-playing. And he attends a revival meeting where he makes a
quiet spectacle of himself by his inability to speak in tongues (or, finally, to
take God for an answer).
If all this sounds like familiar territory,
Theroux, wonderfully gangly and adenoidal, explores it with consummate style.
His interviewing technique hovers perfectly between the self-deprecating and the
mildly patronising. He seems to have inherited unfailing curiosity and a sense
of dogged determination from his father (Paul), but on this hugely enjoyable
evidence he looks as though he may just turn out to be the Second Coming of
another media traveller: an Alan Whicker for the 21st century.
LOUIS
THEROUX'S Weird Weekends was one of the most charming, embarrassing and
surprising documentary series of recent years. The premise was simple. Our man
Louis (son of Paul, if you didn't know) spent some quality time in the homes of
people who represented some of the most lunatic enclaves of American society:
UFOlogists, fundamentalist Christians, right-wing survivalists and porn actors.
And instead of exposing these people as charlatans or crooks, he befriended
them, cajoled them gently for the benefit of the viewers at home, and hinted at
the human warmth that resided somewhere within all of them. For instance, behind
a barbed-wire fence somewhere in the Midwest, he encountered a gun-totin' white
supremacist, who wanted to see blacks, Jews and gays wiped off the face of the
earth, but also turned out to be a big fan of Are You Being Served? For Louis
Theroux's Weird Christmas (BBC2), he returned their hospitality, inviting a
group of his Weird Weekenders to pull crackers with him in his Brooklyn
apartment. If you were anxious about your relatives coming for Christmas dinner,
then this programme might have helped you put your seasonal diplomacy challenges
into perspective. Theroux's turkey was to be demolished by firebrand preacher
Randy James, pint-sized skinflick ingenu JJ Michaels, hoary troglodyte
survivalist Mike Oehler (who spent 28 years living in a hole in Idaho), and the
Reverend Robert Short, an alien contactee who channelled messages from the
planet Koldas.
As you might expect, there were a few tensions. JJ had a
problem with Randy's goggle-eyed hallelujah-ing ("I don't like things shoved
down my throat," he protested, momentarily forgetting the details of his day
job). Randy had problems with being asked to dress up as Father Christmas (or
"Satan Claws", as he insisted on calling him). Robert Short had problems
contacting Korton the extra-terrestrial (judging by the extraordinary gurgling
noises he was making as he struggled to achieve psychic link- up). And Oehler
had problems keeping a straight face as the Reverend boomed Korton's responses
in the style of one of those computers in Star Trek which people have been
unwittingly worshipping as gods since their ancestors went underground to escape
the solar flares. You know the kind of thing. Plausible it was not. Despite
their differences, however, there was an uneasy accord between all parties, who
seemed no more bonkers than the New Yorkers to whom they were introduced on
their trip. True, Randy sulked in the doormobile as JJ took part in a porn shoot
on the banks of the Hudson. But his disapproval was more than made up for by
Mike's poorly concealed enthusiasm. I guess a man gets lonely living underground
in the woods with only the coneys and his rifle for company. Christmas Day
itself went quite well - once Randy had decided that instead of yelling about
which of the guests was most likely to burn in the everlasting flames of Hell,
he'd just leave the room when something he disliked started to happen. The
Therovian Christmas message was that if these guys could get on, we shouldn't
have too much trouble. However, we didn't see the arguments about who was going
to do the washing up. end.
MOST COUNTRIES are defined by what they
make; America is defined by what it buys. No other country consumes more, or
with less discrimination. Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends (BBC2) investigated the
world of "infomercials". He visited the Home Shopping Network at Tampa, Florida,
where, every day, professional salesmen enthuse to the public over the virtues
and cheapness of hand-cranked food- processors, domestic paper shredders,
therapeutic magnets, and other devices you will wonder how you ever did without.
Here, Anthony Sullivan, a former Englishman long since gone native, gave a
hustling, jabbering demonstration of the techniques. Then it was off to meet Dr
Win - Win Paris, PhD, a tiny, mop- topped geriatric in an Evel Knievel jacket,
who claims to have earned "millions and millions and millions and millions and
millions and millions of dollars" from fitness machines. Within a few minutes of
their first meeting, Dr Win had Theroux stripped to the waist to try out a
sit-up machine, and shortly afterwards he was bent over the Beautiful Buns
machine, straining while Theroux whacked his buttocks. "Like wood," Theroux
admitted, and kept on whacking. "This is awesome!" Dr Win cried out.
"Harder!"
At their next meeting, Dr Win wrestled Theroux to the floor by
way of greeting - over-exuberance excused by anxiety in the run-up to the
television launch of his Global Fitness Revolution. (This turned out to be on a
local cable station where they reckoned an audience of 10 was pretty good.) The
third time around, Dr Win opened the door of his apartment wearing nothing but a
bathrobe. I was becoming seriously worried about the direction this relationship
was taking. Meanwhile, Theroux had travelled west to California to meet Cesare,
a cosmetics expert who was about to launch into the world of infomercials with
his face-shaping make-up. To demonstrate its effectiveness, he treated Theroux
to a make-over, including haircut: Theroux stared at his own reflection. "Wow!
That's amazing! The hair has so much body!"
This is what makes Theroux
such an effective commentator on America: he never succumbs to the temptation to
giggle, offering instead a perfect imitation of American enthusiasm - he seems
to enjoy the perpetual rapture of a small boy in front of a really good
Scalextric set-up. Watching last night, it seemed genuine, as though he really
had given in to the sheer abundance of American life. Preparing to try his own
hand at an infomercial, he rhapsodised over the goods on offer - a smoke odour
absorber: "It actually absorbs the odour of the smoke," he gasped.
When he
finally went on air, though, touting a domestic paper- shredder, it became clear
this was an illusion. While the studio crew screamed directions in his ear-piece
("Start shredding! Shred while you talk! Five pieces at once! Convenience!"), he
turned awkward, shy, ironic: British, in fact. It was a sad moment: Theroux
looks as if he really loves America, wants to be a part of it. In the end,
though, faced with its plenty, he froze - a small boy with his nose pressed
against the window. But that's why you can trust him. end.
Louis
Theroux also has cold hands. The trick to Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends (BBC2,
Thurs) is that the former reporter on Michael Moore's shows (Moore is another
Aaronovitch hero), seeks out the strange lifestyle, and suggests that he is open
to embracing it himself. His subjects take him to their bosom, charmed by his
naivety, while all the time he gently subverts their beliefs for the amusement
of the viewer.
This makes him, I suppose, something of an exploitative
liar, albeit an amusing one. In this week's show he was among the born-again of
California, appearing on the live TV show of manikin preacher Marcus Lamb (the
Lamb of God, naturally) and his brassy wife, Joni. Marcus and Joni had Theroux
partly sussed, so I felt no sympathy for them.
But he also befriended
Anne Lee, Lamb's 59-year-old receptionist, who took a real shine to him, and who
clearly believed that he might be converted. He went to church with her, went
back to her house, listened to her tales of past marital breakdown and
alcoholism, and repeatedly ribbed her about her greeting - "Angels on your
body!" - with schoolboy glee.
But, of course, he was not in any way
available for conversion. Far from it. His purpose, had he been honest to Anne
Lee, was to take the piss. And while I enjoyed the programme, I ended up with
the uneasy feeling that she had more real angels on her body than I, or Louis,
or even Lucy.