.png)
It’s fair to say Louis Theroux has a god-like status in the world of TV.
From interviewing infamous paedophile Jimmy Saville to meeting mothers crippled by post-natal depression, the documentarian has secured national treasure status after 25 years on our screens.
But this time, he has stepped behind the camera to bring us a gripping new four-part series The Bambers: Murder At The Farm.
Theroux has moved into the role of executive producer for an in-depth look at the Jeremy Bamber case and the horrific circumstances surrounding his family’s death.
Advert
In 1985, police entered a secluded Essex farmhouse to find five dead bodies — a young mother Sheila Caffell, her twin six-year-old sons, and her parents. They had all been shot and killed.
The crime initially appeared to be a murder-suicide committed by Sheila, but fresh evidence pointed to brother Jeremy Bamber. He was arrested, charged, and convicted of all five murders and sent to prison for life.
Since then, Bamber has been fighting his conviction from prison, maintaining his innocence.
Speaking to Tyla, the award-winning journalist said the case is ‘divisive” and urged people to approach the series “with an open mind, or at least in a spirit of curiosity”.
Advert
“It's a high-profile case," he explains. "It's a case that continues to fascinate and intrigue people. It's a case that has kept in the headlines by the fact that Jeremy Bamber is consistently [and] has consistently maintained his innocence, and is in fact the only prisoner in the UK on a full-life tariff who has consistently maintained their innocence.
“Whether you believe he did it, or she did or even someone else did it. There are things that are hard to explain, and that’s I think what’s so intriguing, [and] so weird about the case.
He added the subject is “highly-charged and it’s deeply emotional" and "there are people who are passionately committed on both sides”.
Director of the docu-series Lottie Gammon, who worked with Louis on The Night In Question, told Tyla: “There are lots of theories, and lots of questions from people who know about the case, and we tried to deep-dive into that and we don’t shy away from it. Whereas, I think often this case is looked at it in quite black and white kind of way - either you believe he's 100 per cent innocent or 100 per cent guilty. We’ve tried to show this is really complicated, and there are reasons why it’s stayed in the public eye."
Advert
After launching Mindhouse Productions in 2019, Louis said the shift from an on-screen journalist to behind-the-scenes has been “special” and that being a TV presenter can be ‘oddly infantilising’
“There’s a prestige attached to being a TV presenter but at the same time, it can be oddly infantilising. Because you’re sort of seen as the pampered nincompoop, the one who has to be tolerated and their opinions have to be tolerated because they’re the ones on camera.
“But you don’t feel quite like you’re a grown-up and as weird as it might sound, even after 25 years in TV, I have a little bit of that feeling of do I actually work in television or am I just kind of a journalist who got lucky and basically, for some weird reason, people allow me to go around interviewing, making programmes but the director makes it really, or the producer or the editor. Here I feel as though, it’s just nice to feel like I’m bringing something else to the table, like creative input that it is valued on its own merits.”
Advert
The Bambers: Murder at The Farm premieres on Sky Crime and NOW on 26th September at 9pm.
Featured Image Credit: PA/Sky