DOING DRUGS FOR FUN - Channel 5 - Alaska TV
SERIES EDITOR - 3 x 45’
Four recreational cocaine users face the reality of their role in the global drugs trade, by seeing how their favourite party drug is made in Colombia, and learning how their consumption affects lives across the globe.
Involved incredibly high-risk and sensitive access with cartels, assassins, the Military, Navy and National Police, plus smugglers, and dealers in the UK.
NOMINATED FOR ‘BEST FACTUAL SERIES’ ROYAL TELEVISION SOCIETY SOUTHERN AWARDS 2020
“So, Doing Drugs for Fun? is, simply, good. Very good, in fact. It is a deep-dive through the superficial fun of a party drug that 1 million Britons take into the brutality beneath. It manages to be compelling, honest and unpreachy, and treats its subject with robust respect. Central to this is the fact that the four users whose revelatory journeys we follow have clearly been chosen with acute care. They are all perfectly ordinary, save for the gift (a natural one that can’t be taught) of remaining engaging and unaffected in the presence of a camera. They are interested and open-minded, not hostile or rebarbative, and none is a Character-with-a-capital-C. They are here to act as a conduit between the viewers and the subject, rather than to form an antic barrier between the two. This is rare enough to be a striking and admirable choice.” The Guardian 08/10/19
“The judges were impressed by this imaginative project, that managed to secure a remarkable level of access, including an interview with a 39-year-old female assassin (who referred to herself as ‘the Devil’). The film takes the audience on an emotive and disturbing journey into this underworld. The judges felt the film was genuinely transformative, in a way that the drug could never be.” RTS Judges.
“The volunteers flew to Medellín in Colombia, home town of Pablo Escobar and the country’s former cartel capital, and things got more interesting… The visitors collided with some crushing home truths about the cocaine industry’s trail of devastation.” The Independent 08/10/19