The BBC interview: The DG & the Doc Mark Thompson in coversation with Steve Hewlett

How vital to the DNA of modern television is the documentary? The BBC currently produces more factual programmes and documentaries than any other broadcaster in the world, yet Mark Thompson, the new Director General of the BBC, has cut budgets for indies and in-house alike and announced fifty per cent cuts in the BBC Documentary Department. So what does he think about the modern documentary? Mark Thompson will select those films that he thinks best illustrate television's changing relationship with the documentary form and reveal what they say to him and the present, the past and the future of the genre.