UPCOMING EPISODES

In 2009 armed Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama. Four years later Hollywood gave America a new hero in the form of its commander, Captain Phillips. But the real story is the desperate struggle of another man: Chief Engineer Mike Perry. Below decks he disables the ship and works to save the crew. His critical fight back leads to the captures of the pirate leader – a crucial bargaining chip in the eventual negotiations to get the pirates off the Alabama.

In the Hollywood blockbuster ‘American Made’, Tom Cruise stars as legendary 80s drug smuggler Barry Seal. In the movie, the CIA recruit Seal to fly clandestine reconnaissance missions in Central America - but the truth is that Seal never worked for the CIA. In the Real Story, Seal, a prolific drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel flips as a DEA agent after being caught in an elaborate sting. Seal leads the DEA directly to Pablo Escobar - but his mission is sunk when clandestine photos he takes of Escobar loading cocaine are leaked to the press. Seal’s identity was revealed to the world and he is abandoned by the system to the cartel’s wrath. Inevitably Barry Seal is killed in a hail of bullets.

In the 2016 film the Infiltrator Bryan Cranston stars as US Customs agent Robert Mazur. Robert and his team of agents go deep undercover to infiltrate the dangerous world of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel. Their work leads to the arrest of some of Escobar’s top importers and the collapse of a multinational bank that laundered their dirty money. But what the film doesn’t show is that the deeper Robert infiltrates the cartel the more they suspect he’s a federal agent. When he realises he’s in too deep he knows the only way of getting out alive is to put the Cartel behind bars before they discover his real identity.

The film is an account of the terrorist attack, on Patriots Day 2013, on the Boston Marathon perpetrated by the Tsarnaev brothers. It shows the carnage, especially the young couple who both had to have limbs amputated, how the bombers were identified and the bloody shoot out between the police and Tamerian Tsarnaev. The film implies that the brothers attacked the marathon out of the blue, having been radicalised. However the real story is that they had been suspected of criminal offences and radicalisation for years. The Russian government warned the US about the family’s behaviour on two occasions. Tamerlan remains connected to a triple homicide in Massachusetts in 2011. So what did the security services really know?

In the feature film, Lone Survivor, a secret US Navy SEAL mission in Afghanistan is ambushed and only one man, Marcus Luttrell, survives. The film follows Luttrell's struggle to escape from Taliban territory alive. But in reality, he couldn’t have done it without the bravery of an Afghan villager, Mohammad Gulab, who puts himself and his family at great risk. With Luttrell safely back in the US, Gulab becomes a target for the Taliban - and his relatives are caught in the crossfire.

The movie ‘American Sniper’ tells the tale of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, but is this version really an accurate portrait? The truth is that Kyle is a more controversial and complex character than anything seen in the movie.

Paul Greengrass’ drama-thriller ‘United 93’ depicts the events on board the ill-fated United Airlines Flight 93. Hijacked as part of the attack on September 11, 2001, the Al-Qaeda terrorists were on a suicide mission to crash the plane into a Washington DC target – most likely the capitol. The film highlights how the passengers heroically took control of the plane, causing it to crash into a field in Pennsylvania. In the Real Story, we follow the radicalisation of the key terrorist and explore how the conflicted terrorist likely delayed the hijack giving the passengers time to discover the larger terror plot they were a part of and change the course of history.