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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Four Wives, One Man


I always mean to watch these True Stories docs on More4, but then find something easy and trashy on another channel and give them up. But last night when I got in and switched the TV on it just happened to be tuned to More4 (I think I'd probably been watching a repeat of a Grand Designs I'd seen before) and this doc was about half an hour in. And I was completely hooked. It was absolutely fantastic.
It follows a family in an Iranian village: a man, his four wives, twenty children and his mother. The women all have a story to tell of divorce, sadness and betrayal and watching the man squirming when they nag him or answer back is at least a little pay-back for the beatings they say he gives them. The mother pitches in with her view that her husband was a real man, who loved only her, while all five of her sons are 'just sheep'... And yet it isn't ultimately a tragic story. It is full of humour and banter between the women.

What's great about the way this is filmed is that there is no intrusive narrator, or interviewer. It is just the family, talking to camera or to each other.

I have already recommended the programme to everyone I know, and now recommend it to you.

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