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It has been almost 30 years since Louis Theroux began making documentaries for the BBC. Few could have predicted that the endearingly dorky figure who made his first series, Weird Weekends – throwing himself, gonzo-style, into strange American subcultures – would become a public figure as famous as many of his celebrity interviewees.
With nearly 100 BBC titles under his belt, Theroux is now moving over to Netflix. Inside the Manosphere, the first programme he has presented for the streamer, dives into the world of the men’s rights movement, and explorations of masculinity, in the extremely online era. Ahead of its release on 11 March, we pick out 20 of Theroux’s finest docs to date.
20. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends: Survivalists (1998)
A fascinating dive into a world of people preparing for the worst-case scenarios of societal collapse. Theroux gets drunk and sleeps at the house of an environmentalist living in an underground bunker, shoots guns with heavily armed rightwing patriots and learns about the plans of an Aryan Nation church who are gearing up to tackle a potential invasion from a “new world order”.
19. When Louis Met Max Clifford (2002)
Before Clifford was convicted of indecent assault, Theroux hitched along with the celebrity publicist to explore the dark art of tabloid spin. Clifford doesn’t play ball, setting Theroux up for salacious red-top stories by inviting him to a meeting at a lapdancing club, only for the presenter to find himself in the pages of the Sun. It ends sourly with Clifford ripping off his mic and storming off, after getting caught out trying another crafty PR stunt. Clearly, making the programme was a frustrating experience for Theroux, but it’s a watchable ride nonetheless.
18. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends: Rap (2002)
This film, which sees a young Theroux try to break into the rap game, was the source of his 2022 viral hit, Jiggle Jiggle, based on a song he penned for a rap battle (“My money don’t jiggle jiggle, it folds”). It also features wannabe gangster rappers, pimps, and industry big hitter Master P. “Did you say you’re going to give someone a ghetto-rectomy?” asks a bemused Theroux, of a complex anatomical assault a rapper sings about at one point, in this fun, slightly frivolous outing from his early years.
17. My Scientology Movie (2016)
Films about Scientology always face the same issue: access. The church is hostile to perceived critics – as Theroux finds here when they begin to stalk him with their own cameras – so he changes tack. He borrows from Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing by hiring actors to re-enact troubling scenarios alleged to have taken place. Both stylistically, and as his only feature film until now, it remains a curious anomaly in Theroux’s filmography.
16. A Place for Paedophiles (2009)
Theroux visits a purpose-built hospital that houses sexually violent predators, including child abusers. A challenging subject with troubling stories, but it’s one that he handles with grace and sensitivity, opening up conversation rather than simply dishing out fiery condemnation.
15. Louis, Martin & Michael (2003)
In many ways, this is a failure of a documentary. It sees Theroux running in circles trying to gain access to Michael Jackson but losing out to Martin Bashir and his infamous documentary. But his attempts to crack into Jackson’s elusive world, including an interview with his father negotiated nervously via the singer’s personal magician (a hustler-like figure named Majestik Magnificent), means it remains an entertaining quest.
14. By Reason of Insanity (2015)
A two-part series based in an institution for people who have committed horrendous crimes but have been diagnosed with serious mental illness. Theroux is in fine form as a sensitive but inquisitive interviewer. He asks difficult questions about dark situations, and the open, calm, judgment-free conversations that flow feel like a rare insight into minds we rarely hear from.
13. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends: Porn (1998)
Back in 1998, pornography was not as ubiquitous as it is now, so this behind-the-scenes peek into the industry was rare. As per his style at the time, Theroux playfully looks into making it as a star himself. He strips naked to have modelling photos taken and lands a cameo in a gay adult film. The doc is filled with memorable characters, good and bad: from likable young hotshot JJ to nasty provocateur Rob, who ends up in jail. Theroux returned to them in 2012’s Twilight of the Porn Stars.
12. Miami Mega Jail (2011)
A two-parter that goes deep into the US prison system, with Theroux gaining access to every part of a sprawling Miami jail, even inside the cells. Housing some of the US’s “most dangerous” inmates, it’s a brutal, violent, territorial – and often inhumane – world that he shows us.
11. Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America: Extreme and Online (2022)
An exploration of a new generation of far-right characters who are terminally online, featuring the likes of Nick Fuentes (whose trajectory since has become even more poisonous). Theroux gets the cameras turned on him – “you hate white people” and “you’re a disgrace” shouts one interviewee who is livestreaming their conversation – but he does a robust job of prodding back at the trolls.
10. A Different Brain (2016)
“Did you support Arsenal before the brain injury?” asks Theroux in a clip that now regularly pops up on social media to taunt football fans. But his exploration of living with the long-term effects of a brain injury is a heartbreaker. In particular, the fractured post-injury relationship between Amanda and Rob – the former moving back in with her family after two years in residential rehab, but not fully connecting with them again – hits home with tremendous weight.
9. Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends: Wrestling (1999)
A fun classic of Theroux’s early era, in which participation and a playful goofiness were core to his approach. He visits the World Championship Wrestling training camp in Atlanta, Georgia, where hopefuls go to make it, looking like an ant in a room full of rhinos. He immediately annoys the head trainer with his naive questions about whether wrestling is real or not, and is forced to train until he pukes while screaming: “I am a dying cockroach!”
8. Dark States: Heroin Town (2017)
A devastatingly bleak portrayal of Huntington, West Virginia, a once-prosperous industrial town where one in four adults are now dependent on opiates. Aside from looking at the lives of people this affects, the programme doubles up as a powerful indictment of how a profit-focused industry’s overprescription of painkillers led to a horrific drug-addiction epidemic.
7. When Louis Met the Hamiltons (2001)
A film that was no doubt intended to be a curious poke around in the lives of an eccentric couple – ex-Conservative MP Neil Hamilton and his wife, Christine – that swerves hard when they find themselves accused of sexual assault during filming (which they denied, and the investigation was dropped; their accuser was later jailed for perverting the course of justice). Chaos ensues, a media scrum follows, but only one person is at the centre of it all, with inside access: Theroux.
6. Extreme Love: Dementia (2012)
Anyone who has been touched by dementia knows the heartache it can cause. Here, spending time in a US residential institution for those with the condition, Theroux taps into that pain with near-palpable levels. But it’s also a film filled with love, care, beauty, tenderness and humour, as it unflinchingly depicts one of life’s cruellest diseases.
5. When Louis Met Jimmy (2000)
Before the revelations of his sickening crimes, Theroux went to stay in the house of Jimmy Savile. Hints of a darker character, beyond his hammed-up eccentricities used for cover, are revealed here via off-camera confessions of violence while Savile was still mic’d up. When Theroux touches upon tabloid accusations of paedophilia, Savile responds coldly: “How do they know whether I am or not? How does anybody know whether I am?” His Savile’s victims would later accuse Theroux of being “hoodwinked” for failing to grill him more thoroughly. It’s a grimly fascinating document, but a dark shadow hangs over it now; Theroux revisited the subject in 2016 (Savile) to wrestle with his guilt.
4. The Settlers (2025)
After the disappointing – and at times overly cosy and chummy – celebrity series Louis Theroux Interviews, this ostensible follow-up to 2011’s The Ultra Zionists was a noted return to form. Theroux’s on-the-ground coverage of growing illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the ideologies that drive them, is a distressing and depressing watch, but it’s a late-career highlight that captures him at his best journalistically.
3. Louis and the Nazis (2003)
Hanging out with Tom Metzger, a man once dubbed “the most dangerous racist in America”, this near-feature-length documentary is a firecracker. From a very tense showdown with neo-Nazis in which Theroux boldly refuses to reveal whether he is Jewish, to him meeting a Nazi folk-pop duo – made up of twin children Lynx and Lamb –this is an unsettling plunge into the dark underbelly of the US.
2. Drinking to Oblivion (2016)
Likely inspired by one of Theroux’s favourite documentaries, Paul Watson’s Rain in My Heart – about alcoholism – here he embeds himself within a hospital’s specialist liver centre. The result is a tough, eye-opening but incredibly moving watch. In particular the torturous plight of one young man battling addiction, Joe, creates a remarkable emotive story at the heart of the film. Joe’s desperate plea for Theroux to hug him, with the journalist clearly looking ethically torn, remains an indelible moment.
1. The Most Hated Family in America (2007)
The deranged homophobic ramblings of the Westboro Baptist church feel quaint by the current standards of conservative discourse in the US. However, before the Netflix era boom of endless true crime and cult documentaries, this film, about a family church in Kansas who love to picket the funerals of dead soldiers, was jaw-dropping when it landed. Frightening viewing, with incredible access and almost unbelievable characters, its success spawned two follow-up films.
