The Best of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends: Volume Two (2002)

Louis is a journalist but unusually for someone in that profession he's a likeable guy. What sets him apart from his peers is that he celebrates the weirdness of people, and enthuses about things meaningful to them. He’s non-aggressive and reassuring. He can encourage people to open up in unique ways, while remaining respectful of boundaries. Quite often he’ll get attached to people; he calls them friends and seems to genuinely care about their well-being.

He’s been accused of feigning naïveté but it's hard to make a judgement call on whether that’s true or not. I think perhaps people feel sorry for him, so they give him the exposé he seeks. Doing so also helps them feel superior. He’ll partake of an opportunity to play up a situation but he’s always honest about his feelings, chooses his words carefully, and his methods of eliciting responses are a far cry from the manipulation that the people he interviews often rely on to preach their own agenda. They do a better job of ridiculing themselves than he ever could.

In this collection he meets a happily married Southern Californian couple that host swinging parties in their home; he meets Afrikaner separatists in post-apartheid South Africa (there’s a tension filled interview during that episode that I’d have run a mile from; it seems that scrawny Louis has balls of steel); he meets professional wrestlers from the WCW and gets subjected to actual physical and mental abuse for his troubles; and then he gets hypnotised... or not. He's not quite sure.

Like Volume One the box contains just five episodes (two from S2, two from S3, and a bonus episode from a series called 'When Louis Met...' which saw him visit British celebrities in their homes).

5 episodes, approx 55 minutes each.

4 black and white arguments out of 5