Broadmoor Doc Series Featuring “Brand New Testimony” In Works At Paramount UK Network Channel 5

Max Goldbart
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: A Broadmoor hospital doc featuring “brand-new testimony from ex-patients and ex-staff” is in the works at Paramount UK network Channel 5.

Inside Broadmoor [working title] will feature interviews, archive and stylized reconstructions revealing stories about one of the nation’s oldest and highest security psychiatric hospitals. The institution in Berkshire was built in 1863, at which point it was called Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, and it has gained notoriety down the years and housed high-profile patients including Charles Bronson and Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. The late Jimmy Savile, who was posthumously outed as a serial sexual abuser, was later accused of abuse while doing voluntary work at Broadmoor.

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Channel 5’s four-parter will tell the stories of patients doing time for the most high-profile cases. Key contributions from ex-staff will reveal secrets including stories of brutal attacks, fights, and murders, while the series will examine what makes dangerous people mad as well as bad and explore how staff treat some of Britain’s most dangerous and unstable men. One episode will be devoted to revealing secrets and scandals.

Channel 5 has had a penchant of late for documentaries on prisons and institutions and Inside Broadmoor indie Good TV has also been behind HMP Wakefield: Evil Behind Bars, as well as drama documentaries The Man Who Took Shannon Matthews and James Bulger: The Trial. Commissioning editor on the latest doc is Dan Louw.

“Broadmoor will never cease to fascinate us,” said Good TV exec Elliot Reed. “It’s a place full of drama, mystery and intrigue. This series unearths untold stories form inside its walls, reveals brand new patient case studies, and unravels fresh tales about some of its more familiar faces.”

Broadmoor has been the subject of many a documentary down the years and Channel 5 previously made 90-minute feature Inside Broadmoor: Criminally Insane in 2021.

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