Going Postal
BBC2, Monday 25 May 10:00pm - 11:30pm The title of this chilling film is the term coined in the 1980s for mass workplace shootings. It originated in the USA after a series of bloody rampages involving disgruntled post-office workers. But "going postal" has also grown to encompass American high-school massacres, the most notorious of which, at Columbine, happened just over ten years ago. Going Postal benefits from not having some whispery-voiced narrator - it lets everyone involved speak for themselves. The contributors include bereaved families - the aunt of a young man shot dead at his school sobs as she says, "All I can think of is that no-one was there when he died"; those who escaped with their lives, often with dreadful injuries; and, in the case of Michael Carneal, even a killer. Carneal was 14 when in 1997 he opened fire on fellow students at a prayer group meeting at their Kentucky high school. Three died and five others were wounded. Carneal talks from prison about what led him to commit such a terrible act, while making the astonishingly narcissistic plea that it should not be allowed to "define" him.
VIDEO Plus+: 46187
Subtitled, Widescreen, Audio-described
Directed by: Paul Tickell
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