The BBC has announced 2 new series and 3 single films at the Sheffield DocFest.
That includes a Taken: Britain’s Forced Adoption Scandal which uncovers the full story of Britain’s forced adoption scandal.
“In our increasingly polarised world, where algorithms feed us the voices and opinions which chime with our own, documentaries have an ever more important role to play, bringing us perspectives and stories that have previously remained unheard,” said Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning, Documentaries, ahead of the BBC Unscripted panel in Sheffield.
She added that the documentaries “reveal big, complex and uniquely British stories which explore who we are and the values that underpin us a nation, from the forced adoption scandal to mass water poisoning in North Cornwall and an insight into the UK’s prison system.”
The new series are Once Upon a Time in the Middle East (working title), from the award-winning team behind Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, Once Upon a Time in Iraq and the upcoming Once Upon a Time in Space.
The show will feature interviews with ordinary people from all sides of the conflict, who have multiple points of view on the history of the Middle East, and showing rare and unseen archive footage.
“Our Once Upon a Time documentary strand gives regular people the space to share their experience of historical events without judgement and seeks empathy and understanding from all sides,” said director, James Bluemel.
“We have told the stories of people who experienced the war in Iraq, lived through the conflict in Northern Ireland and even those who have been pioneers in outer space. Once Upon a Time in the Middle East is our most ambitious project yet.”
The 5 x 60 minute series is made for BBC Two and iPlayer by Keo Films.
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The second series is a two parter – Coerced or Corrupted: Inside Prisons, which sees journalist Mobeen Azhar attempt to uncover what’s really going on inside the UK prison system and who or what is driving it.
“There have been so many stories involving sex and scandal in the UK prison system,” explained Azhar.
“Our mission is to go beyond the click bait and the headlines and find out what is going on behind closed doors. How is contraband getting in? How widespread is corruption and why is it something we all need to be concerned about?”
The 2 x 60 minutes series for BBC Three and iPlayer is being produced by Forest.
The three one-offs include Molly Dineen: Our People, made by the acclaimed documentarian.
Using her extensive archive of hitherto unseen footage, Our People will present a very personal portrait of Britain from the 1980s to now. Featuring everyone from Black Rod to Blacker Dread and road diggers to Tony Blair, in a series of behind the scenes encounters with shot over 40 years.
Dineen worked closely with award winning editor, Ollie Huddleston, to create the feature-length documentary to help us understand the profound changes in the psychology of the country during a period of political, economic and demographic ferment.
It will be broadcast on BBC Two and iPlayer in 2026, preceded by a release in selected UK cinemas.
Poison Water (w/t) is a documentary co-production between Button Down and Keo Films, which tells the true story of one of Britain’s worst mass poisonings.
That happened in North Cornwall, 1988, where 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate were accidentally poured into the drinking water supply.
Finally, Taken: Britain’s Forced Adoption Scandal (working title) comes from Glasgow’s Finestripe Productions (Boris Becker: The Rise and Fall) and seeks to uncover the full story of the forced adoption scandal for the first time.
Between the 1940s and the early 1980s, nearly 300,000 unmarried women in the UK had their babies forcibly taken for adoption by the state.
The documentary centres on firsthand testimonies of the mothers and their families, revealing how these communities continue to live with the trauma decades later.
In Scotland, the film follows a team of lawyers pursuing government redress, while in England, calls for an official apology from the British government are growing.
Finestripe gets exclusive access to the lawyers leading these efforts.
Taken: Britain’s Forced Adoption Scandal is a 1×90 film for BBC Two, BBC Scotland and iPlayer.
[Image – Sheffield DocFest]
