Louis Theroux's Forbidden America: Extreme And Online

In his first series of completely new material since the Bafta Award-winning Altered States in 2018, documentary maker Louis Theroux returns to the USA to explore the impact of the internet and social media on some of the most controversial corners of American society.

Travelling the length and breadth of the United States, Louis meets an assortment of fascinating and sometimes troubling content creators: young streamers who promote far-right views; rappers who commodify their often chaotic lifestyles; and porn performers making their income via subscription-based social media accounts and using their new autonomy to call out bad - and occasionally illegal - behaviour by alleged industry predators.

Those familiar with Louis’s previous documentaries will recognise these as three worlds that Louis has explored before. But the impact of online media has transformed each of them, for good and ill, in ways that have profound implications for those involved and also for the wider world.

In episode one, Louis Theroux meets the young and highly inflammatory figures of the latest incarnation of the American far right: a political movement born out of the internet but making its presence felt in the real world, including some of those who came to the broader public's attention through the notorious Capitol Hill riots.

Louis immerses himself in a growing online community that has navigated the threats of de-platforming to gather a vast audience on phones and laptops around the world, promoting an ideology that is racist, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic, often packaging the most extreme views as irony.

With the movement’s most prominent voices having an increasing influence away from the digital realm, Louis attempts to understand their recent surge in popularity and challenges the divisive rhetoric that is being streamed to millions of young viewers online.

Publicity contact: FS