America in the Obama years a 4-hour television history for the BBC

Our Method

Our unit, headed by Norma Percy, has evolved a distinctive style that makes history come alive. It depends on first-hand accounts from key participants.

AMERICA IN THE OBAMA YEARS, a series of 4 one-hour programmes, will follow our usual pattern

Choose the turning points and examine them in detail

Give the principals the chance to tell their own part in the story

No interrogation and no pundits

Seek objectivity by including all sides

Film only after months of research

A BBC policy statement (1995) called this “a new genre of documentary which retells momentous events with meticulous objectivity, the principal actors recording their version of what happened. The narratives that emerge from THE DEATH OF YUGOSLAVIA, THE SECOND RUSSIAN REVOLUTION and others are revelations.”

“The Rolls-Royce of documentary makers” – The Wall Street Journal Series Producer: Norma Percy

Executive Producers: Brian Lapping and Paul Mitchell Producer/Directors: Delphine Jaudeau and Sarah Wallis

THE IRAQ WAR (2013) is the most recent of these series. It was broadcast on the BBC in May 2013, as a two-hour special AMERICA VS IRAQ on the National Geographic Channel, and in France as IRAK, DANS LES

COULISSES D’UNE GUERRE on September 25 2013.

The London Times said of the BBC series: “TV is rarely as gripping, informed and important as this.”

Click on the links below to view the three programmes in the BBC series: Episodes 1: Regime Change 2: After the Fall 3: It's Hell, Mr. President

THE 2nd

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1991). The first of our television histories, 8 hours for the BBC and the Discovery Channel, was seen in 40 countries, including the Soviet Union. For the first time the leading figures, including Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, told the inside story of the revolution that destroyed Communism.

The Royal Television Society’s award citation called it “one of the most dazzling journalistic enterprises of this year, or any other.”

Twenty years later we returned to Moscow for its sequel, PUTIN, RUSSIA & THE WEST (2012). This time it was Putin’s top colleagues - and the Western statesmen who clashed with him – who told the inside story of their dealings with Russia’s leader.

“What sets this series apart is the sheer quality. The interviews and footage would be hard to better. From Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice to Putin himself … major players are here, on camera – and in surprisingly confessional mode.” (The Times)

“Everybody who was anybody has given interviews. The access to politicians, including Putin, is remarkable, and it has all been constructed with a bespoke care and authority.” (AA Gill, The Sunday Times.)

The PUTIN series was broadcast on the BBC, National Geographic channel, in Europe, Australia, Japan – and even on The Russian Network NTV.

IRAN & THE WEST (2009) told the story of 30 years of troubled relations from Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution through the Ahmadinejad presidency – with rare interviews from Iran’s leaders as well as top Americans. The series won 10 major awards, including the Grierson British Documentary Trust award for best television series, the Royal Television Society, a Peabody, and was the first TV documentary to win the Orwell prize.

“The jury feels this is political history made accessible and journalism of the highest quality. Ambitious, compelling and full of revelation, Percy in her inimitable style, tells the inside story through the perspective of two Iranian ex-presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, two founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and leading westerners including President Jimmy Carter”. (One World award citation.)

THE DEATH OF YUGOSLAVIA (1995/6), a six-part series in which Slobodan Milosevic, the other Yugoslav presidents and 60 of their generals, ministers, and rivals each told their part in how he rose to power and gave the world the term ‘ethnic cleansing’. Time Out chose this series as one of the ten best television series of the 20th century: “the series that rewrote the rules on how to cover wars and political history”. It was broadcast all over the world. The series won 16 top awards – including a BAFTA, The Royal Television Society’s Judges Award, a Peabody and the highest honour in US American tv journalism, the rarely given duPont Gold Baton from Columbia University. Re-broadcast in dozens of countries in the Kosovo war, it was used to train diplomats bound for the Balkans.

Its sequel, THE FALL OF MILOSEVIC (2003), has President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, President Chirac, their ministers and generals – and President Milosevic’s generals and advisers (including his wife Mira) – telling the story of the Kosovo war and the events that brought Milosevic to The Hague in three 90 minute programmes. It was broadcast on the BBC and the Discovery Channel.

In ELUSIVE PEACE: Israel & the Arabs (2005) President Clinton, Israeli Prime Ministers Sharon and Barak, Yasser Arafat, intelligence chiefs and advisers – and those behind the suicide bombs and assassinations – describe what happened behind closed doors as peace talks gave way to the violence of the intifada. The series was broadcast by the BBC, PBS in America, ARTE in France and Germany, ABC Australia and others, including Al-Jazeera. It won our unit its third Alfred I. duPont award from Columbia University’s School of Journalism; and the Royal Television Society named it “Programme of the Year.”

THE 50 YEARS WAR (1998) a six-part series was our look at Israel and the Arabs, broadcast in both Israel and on MBC throughout the Arab world and repeated often.

AVENGING TERROR was broadcast in 23 countries to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. President Putin, Prime Minister Blair, Chancellor Schroeder, President Musharraf and President Bush’s Cabinet members all still in office described how they put together the coalition to fight the Afghanistan war. The series won among others Britain’s top prize for international current affairs journalism from the Royal Television Society.

ENDGAME IN IRELAND (BBC 2001, PBS 2002) had Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, six other British and Irish Prime Ministers as well as key Northern Ireland politicians – and many of the gunmen - telling the story of the fight for peace. It won our fourth Peabody, and is often used to teach conflict resolution.

PLAYING THE CHINA CARD (1999) won another US Peabody award for, “a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Nixon’s overture to China that’s like the best political novel.”

WATERGATE (1994) interviewed President Nixon’s top aides HR Haldeman and John Erlichman - and the Watergate burglars - won the US Primetime Emmy and was the first foreign series to win Columbia University’s duPont award.

THE WASHINGTON VERSION (1992 BBC, Discovery), Cheney, Scowcroft, Baker, Powell, the Vice President, and others in President Bush’s War Cabinet told the inside story of how they ran the 1991 Gulf War.

TELEVISION

Talking War, Tete-a-Tete

By TUNKU VARADARAJAN

Campaign Against Terror (Sunday 8

th September 2002, 9-11 p.m. EDT)

On PBS (check local listings)

How very often does one wish, as politicians make decisions of global import, that one could sit down with

them, tête-à-tête, and get them to speak plainly of every "why," "why not" and "wherefore." In the last year,

such fanciful living-room guests might have included President Bush of course, as well as Colin Powell,

Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair, Vladimir Putin, Gen. Pervez Musharraf (the Pakistani

dictator), Hamid Karzai (the Afghan president) and a variety of others.

But because the logistics of such a series of conversations might

prove, shall we say, a tad taxing for the ordinary individual, may

I suggest an alternative? It is to watch "Campaign Against

Terror," a "Frontline" film produced by Brook

Lapping, the British company that is the acme, the

Rolls-Royce, of documentary makers. The film, a rich concentrate of information and insights, should

not be missed by those who'd like a little more from their pols

than soundbites at press conferences.

Granted Mr. Bush isn't one of the talking heads - a pity, that, for

one would have learned so much by watching him in an

armchair, detached from that public gaze that makes him so

angular, so self-conscious. But there is Mr. Powell, smooth and

laid-back, perhaps secure that he will not be contradicted on film.

Straight talk about the Afghan campaign on 'Frontline'