ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses certain trends in British documentaries of the past 20 years to discover whether they succeed better than the features we have so far looked at in communicating with the audience with archetypal force. As Richard Kilborn has shown, docu-soaps are similar to reality programming in their tabloid deployment of short episodes from the lives of those they observe. The first mode is sentimental romance, an illustration of which is furnished by The Cruise. The series followed the fortunes of staff on board a luxury liner as they served the wealthy holiday-makers who are their clients. The second popular cultural mode in which the docu-soap exploits sexual interest is camp. The direct address of naked psychological autobiography is one mode of contemporary documentary which unquestionably has the power to stir the viewer's emotions at a deep level and allow issues that time has obscured to spill unbidden into the conscious mind.
