James Walton

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

Plus: for any younger viewers, Channel 4's Saucy! Secrets of the British Sex Comedy will be one of the weirdest documentaries they’ll have ever seen

Henry Kissinger, one of the heavyweight talking heads in BBC4's Corridors of Power. Credit: BBC / DrorMorehFilms 
issue 10 August 2024

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away. Before the opening titles, we’d already heard from Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and the late Henry Kissinger. We’d also seen the lines drawn up as to how its bold subtitle might be answered.

It is an authentically confusing programme, where any firm moral position doesn’t stay firm for long

As Clinton put it, in 1945 a question emerged whose implications would dominate post-war US foreign policy: ‘Why didn’t we do more to try to prevent the transport of the Jews?’...

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