Louis Theroux and the mystery of Orson Welles—the best TV in November 2018

 

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Netflix, 2nd November

Orson Welles has a strange legacy. On the one hand, he is considered a master of cinema. On the other, Citizen Kane, his first film which he made aged 25, overshadowed his career. His later films were mostly self-financed and often ignored. The documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is an intimate, sometimes surreal look at his final film, The Other Side of the Wind (released on Netflix the same day.) Narrated by Alan Cumming, it’s spliced with interviews and snippets about Welles’s life.

 

Altered States, BBC2, iPlayer, 4th November

Louis Theroux, below, has spent the last year investigating human stories across the US, and his three-part series, Altered States, will focus on childcare, polyamory and euthanasia. If it sounds heavy and humourless: it’s not. There’s still a dash of Theroux’s trademark awkwardness: one clip sees him fiddling with the height of a child’s scooter preparing to ride it. “Does it go up at all?” he asks. Nope. When he goes whizzing off down the pavement, the concerned child runs after him.

 

Homecoming, Amazon Prime Video, 2nd November

Based on the podcast of the same name, Homecoming is a psychological thriller about a government unit that helps soldiers reintegrate into civilian life. Julia Roberts is Heidi, a former case worker in this unit who is now a waitress living with her mother. Why did she quit? The original Homecoming was a pretty extravagant affair: Catherine Keener and David Schwimmer took the lead roles in the podcast. Amazon’s interpretation cranks it up a notch.