The BBC Interview: Richard Klein

Who needs documentaries? Richard Klein, television's favourite Commissioning Editor, poses a provocative question. Why on earth do we still have documentaries? The forces ranged against them are many. Poleaxed by new technology, pounded by ever mutating forms of factual entertainment and pulverised by the obsession with ratings, surely the documentary should be down and out by now? And to cap all that there's precious little money to be made. So why do we still need them and why do people make them? In a speech that takes in the films he loves and hates, the redemptive power of truth versus the corrosive power of sentimentality and why real life is always stranger and more interesting than fiction, Richard Klein searches for the answers.