UPCOMING EPISODES

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.

In 1970 the New York City Police Department was rocked by the allegations of corruption made by one ordinary patrolman, Frank Serpico. The 1973 Hollywood movie Serpico starring Al Pacino immortalises Frank’s ten-year battle to hold the police force accountable. He was finally vindicated when a New York Times article exposed his story of widespread police corruption and initiated an independent investigation, the Knapp Commission. It is here that the movie ends, with Frank a mythical hero cop. But the fight against corruption came at a heavy price for Frank Serpico as he suffered intense mental trauma from a revenge attempt on his life. Forced to flee his country to live in exile in Europe for over twenty years , Frank lived as a recluse until new claims of NYPD corruption forced him out of the shadows in the late 1990s. This is the real story of the man behind the movie myth.

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?

Zodiac is a 2007 film about the Zodiac series killings in San Francisco in 1969. They remain unsolved. The film follows the real life research of cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who became obsessed with the murderer, as he could decode some of his letters. Graysmith became convinced that the murderer was Arthur Leigh Allen. However the evidence against him was inconclusive. The final letter form Zodiac was sent in 1974. There have been no more Zodiac killings. Robert Graysmith stopped being a cartoonist and became a successful crime writer. So who was Zodiac? This film looks at the mystery.