
鈥 Documentary on BBC2 in the UK, currently scheduled for 5 May
AFTER 60 hours of little sleep, tending crying twins and trying to hold down a job, Michael is tense and becoming a bit paranoid.
Luckily for this seemingly unenviable fellow, he is in fact taking part in a TV experiment. He is , a former UK government minister, and the twins are lifelike dolls, built to be as inconsolable as real-life babies.
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The programme is part of a BBC2 season on that perennially fascinating subject, violence. Portillo explores the extent to which each of us has the capacity for violent behaviour, by way of a Bolivian 鈥渕utual conflict festival鈥, interviews with a football thug and a boy soldier, and a restaging of Stanley Milgram鈥檚 鈥渙bedience鈥 experiments of the 1960s.
It鈥檚 gripping, based on sound science, and for many viewers will be quite shocking. However, anyone acquainted with their own dark side will be left with more questions than answers.