VI.

Docudrama

Dramatized documentaries, or docudramas, have also ignited controversy. Such programmes mix real-life recordings with re-enactments. When crucial evidence is missing, the programme-makers use actors to reproduce what they believe happened. When this contradicts official versions, it has been denounced as “faction”, that is, fiction pretending to be fact. Critics said it was a regrettable new development. It was in fact a revival of methods used years earlier and made more effective by generations of experience. In one telling example, Granada Television mixed traditional documentary, investigative journalism, and drama in Who Bombed Birmingham? The programme, shown in 1990, questioned the criminal convictions of six people (the “Birmingham Six”), named others as the culprits, and helped secure the release of individuals wrongfully jailed.