You cant punch me Im wearing glasses! (Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends
Date:	26/04/09 (213 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Likeable chap

Disadvantages: Get him on BBC1!

There are around 300,000 Jewish people of working age in the UK, and very hard working and intelligent people too, but it feels like 278,000 of them are employed in the media, such is the prevalence and ease of guys like the likeable and disarming Louis Theroux to get on our TV screens, always room for one more Theroux in the entertainment industry it seems. Travel writer father Paul Theroux no doubt made some calls and hey presto, gangly Oxbridge son Louis is soon working on Michael Moore's excellent show, 'TV Nation', over in Manhattan. Louis older brother Marcel is a TV presenter and his cousin is Justin Theroux the American actor. I'm not saying Louis is a bad TV presenter or anything but his gimmick seems to be purely his imposing six foot frame and his 'you can't hit a bloke wearing glasses' angle, excellent for antagonistic TV journalism , his thing. It would be interesting to see him do a weird weekend in Gaza. Is he the new Alan Whicker now the gentile Michael Palin has been pensioned off!

His first TV commissioned TV series was Weird Weekends, of which three runs were made, followed by 'When Louis Met....', where Louis embarrassed a list of long in the tooth British celebrities that had no choice but to be humiliated on shows like this in one last sad thrust for work, the likes of Jimmy Saville and Paul Daniels cruelly cut down by Louis calculated and disguised jibes, the eccentric Saville hardly able to avoid the crosshairs at his age. It was very entertaining though and Louis disarming charm reels them in like a skilled fly fisher.

Theroux's delivery is straightforward, pick on ignorant people that cant or don't want to argue back, easy meat for an articulate guy to slice apart with his subtle scalpel. To be fair he shows some balls, especially when on one episode of Weird Weekends he tackled white supremacist, forgetting to tell them he was Jewish. His recent journey into some of the roughest ghettos on the planet, all black and the guys armed to the teeth, was as equally brave. I lived in South Africa and can tell you that 'Hillbrow', the area where he went, does not see a white face for weeks on end.

-The Episodes of Weird Weekends-

Series 1

Born Again Christians
UFO Hunters
Porn Stars
Survivalist
Weird Christmas

Series 2

Infomercials
Swingers
Black Nationalism
Demolition Derby
Off Off Broadway
Wrestling

Series 3

Hypnotists
Indian Guru
Boer Separatists
Body Building
Thai Brides
Gangsta Rap

Weird weekends worked on the principal that he would spend time with the sort of people who would advertise their oddball services in the classifieds, exploitative and weirdo types offering solutions and clubs for the likewise disaffected in life, mostly extreme right wing groups. If you don't have a girlfriend in America then you would almost certainly have experience of at least three of the above list of shows. The show did tale off by series three as you could see Louis was tiring from it and needed pastures new but held its own.

Louis gets his best stuff from those right wingers, people filled with hate purely because they inherited it from their family tree somewhere. But people like that are like us but only in our conscious, which makes the shows intriguing watching. The thing with Louis is he gives them enough rope and not only do they hang themselves with it but build the gallows and tie the noose. They know they are doing it but for some reason feel they are getting one over on Louis who maybe coming around to their idea of thinking, which couldn't be further from the truth, hence why he picks groups that would hate people like him.

There was variety there, not all the shows shot in America, Demolition Derby about that gypsy that won the lottery very entertaining as he pi**ed off the nouveu rich neighbours with his delinquent antics. The shows was always paced and edited to show these people as odd and extreme minorities, none more so than the guy who claimed to be able to channel aliens from the planet Zog, for a small fee you could share in his superior knowledge form other worlds.

His latest show is the Louis Theroux specials, episode seven broadcast last week looking at a hospital for paedophiles. The idea was the child sex offenders went there of their own volition and got 'treatment' for their condition. Alas only 13 people in the hospitals history has been released into the community totally cured. We were not told how many of those reoffended. One savvy peado was on to them, haranguing Louis with the fact that the hospital gets 200 grand a year for every inmate housed. Times that by 567 and someone is making serious money. But it was an interesting show and produced one of TV creepiest moments of the year, a group of offenders having a sing song around the prison organ, their rendition of the theme tune of the Adams family movie very creepy. Louis likes that sort of thing.

Summary: Whacky TV!