Last night’s TV reviewed: Cult stranger than fiction

BBC

Katie fled the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-LeninismMao Zedong Thought in 2013

This tiny group, founded in South London by Aravindan Balakrishnan in the Seventies, stepped into the limelight in 2013 for reasons unconnected to Chairman Mao.

Three women claimed to have been held captive by Balakrishnan for decades, members of a quasireligious cult built around the personality of one not particularly imposing looking man in spectacles.

Filmmaker Vanessa Engle was among many fascinated by this story and frustrated by the lack of details, channelled her curiosity into the documentary, The Cult Next Door (BBC2).

We’re all dimly aware of what goes on next door and the same is true of those who’d lived near Balakrishnan and his all-female sect. One woman, reasonably for the area, thought all the furtive behaviour was to do with illegal immigration.

Others were more troubled by the lack of contact, the faces that would appear at the window and then vanish.

The police had even raided Balakrishnan’s “party HQ”, hoping to find drugs. Disappointed, they left, asking no further questions.

Even more strangely, TV news crews had taken an interest in the sect in 1996 when one of Balakrishnan’s deeply troubled captives had fallen to her death.

BBC

Aravindan Balakrishnan made the women believe he could control world events

People knew, in other words, that there was some odd, unhappy story behind those doors but they left it alone. The irony is that in China, the country Balakrishnan viewed as a supernatural, world-controlling force, he wouldn’t have got away with three decades of sexual assault and mental abuse.

Only in Britain, a “fascist state” according to the cult, could you lock a bunch of women up in a suburban street for three decades and be largely left alone.

Engle was good, as she always is, at gaining the confidence of Katie and Aisha, two of the captives who fled in 2013, and you never knew who to feel most sorry for.

BBC

Balakrishnan founded the all women group in the Seventies

Katie, who’d been born and raised in the twisted world of the cult, used to hug the tap and the toilet, because she thought they were on her side. She chortled continually as she described the things she’d been raised believing, that Balakrishnan controlled world events and she’d be struck dead if she went out without permission.

There was no joy in her laughter though and even though she was just 30, you wondered what kind of life lay ahead.

In some ways, things seemed easier for Aisha who was 69, in sheltered housing and still cushioned by believing a lot of the myths she’d been fed.

The interviews were uncomfortable at times but necessary, reminding us that this wasn’t actually a weird story, just a very sad one.

BBC

British History’s Biggest Fibs With Lucy Worsley

British History’s Biggest Fibs With Lucy Worsley (BBC4) isn’t so much about the fibs as the history, which from ancient times onwards has been written to shine a light on certain facts and cast others into shadow. She began with the Wars of the Roses, the term itself an invention of later centuries.

The whole white rose-red rose symbolism thing was another bit of spin, tacked on by the victor Henry VII as he asserted his right to the throne.

Toothsome stuff but resting on the assumption that anyone believed the stories in their textbooks were true in the first place.

The crown landing on a hawthorn bush? I knew that one was a whopper when I was nine.

Original Article