Leslie Woodhead obituary
Director of current affairs programmes who was a pioneer of drama-documentaries on British television
The film-maker Leslie Woodhead, who has died aged 88, helped to establish the hard-hitting ITV current affairs programme World in Action, and was a pioneer of drama-documentaries on British television. He invented the format as a way of telling the stories of those behind the iron curtain during the cold war between the Soviet Union and the west, when direct access for journalists and film crews was difficult. “For us, the dramatised documentary is an exercise in journalism, not dramatic art,” he explained.
The first was The Man Who Wouldn’t Keep Quiet (1970), which told the story of the Russian dissident and former Soviet army general Petro Grigorenko, who was being held in a psychiatric hospital, portrayed by actors.
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