All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
BBC2, Monday 23 May 9:00pm - 10:00pm
1/3, series 1 - Love and Power Hang on to your hats everyone. Adam Curtis is back, and his documentary series (The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self) are renowned for bringing storms of big ideas, great gales of polemic that either blow you away or give you the sensation of having been shaken awake after a long brainwashing. This time his story takes in - well, what doesn't it take in? Tonight's opener leads up to the 2008 financial crisis, but that's just the punch-line to a narrative that begins with utopian US novelist Ayn Rand (1905-82). Her philosophy of individualism inspired both a generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and US central banker Alan Greenspan. Between them, Curtis argues in his calm, sing-song narration, they drew us into a world where computers and the wisdom of crowds would make everything stable - except they didn't, and it wasn't. Curtis's sweeping theories don't fit well in nutshells, but the ideas are only half the fun. The brilliant analysis comes clothed in his trademark melange of archive footage, haunting music and captions in giant, pink capital letters ("BUT 40 YEARS EARLIER"). As the images of dolls on conveyor belts and Bill Clinton picking his teeth roll by, enjoy the ride.
Radio Times reviewer - David Butcher
VIDEO Plus+: 6491
Subtitled, Widescreen
Directed by: Adam CurtisRadiotimes
