Before the Internet. Before Social Media. Before Breaking News. The victims of Thalidomide had to rely on something even more extraordinary to fight their corner: Investigative Journalism. This is the story of how Harold Evans fought and won the battle of his and many other lives.
Siblings David and Jacqui Morris build on their impressive debut documentary McCullin (2012), with this ambitious profile of Harold Evans and his bid to expose the iniquitous history of the controversial morning sickness drug, Thalidomide. Following an introductory section on how Evans became a journalist and left The Northern Echo in 1967 to edit The Sunday Times, the Morrises turn their attention to the restrictions an ongoing compensation case placed on the paper's Insight reporting team. They had identified that the drug licenced from the German company Chemie Grünenthal by beverage business Distillers had initially been developed by the Nazis as an antidote to nerve gas but had barely been tested on pregnant women before being marketed. By combining the 87-year-old Evans's eloquent recollections with interviews with Thalidomide victims and stark and often shocking monochrome archive footage, the co-directors not only chronicle a landmark scoop, but also highlight the importance of investigative journalism. It's also a lament that this vital means of holding governments, businesses and individuals to account is under threat in an age of advertorials and infotainment.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Narrator | Michael Sheen |
| Harold Evans | Harold Evans |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | David Morris (2) |
| Director | Jacqui Morris |
