成人论坛

On Tuesday 14 November, 成人论坛 Three began airing Drugsland, a documentary series offering a real, dramatic, living and breathing experience for the audience about the state of the nation in relation to drugs. Here executive producer Sacha Mirzoeff gives some insight into how the programme was made:

There’s a plethora of programmes on TV about drugs – almost as many as cooking, property and dancing. So how could we do something different?  

We decided to throw our net far and wide and try and juggle as many spinning plates as we could when we started on .

We set the series in one forward-thinking city – Bristol, a place where multi-agency work excels and where several new schemes are being trialled. But if it was going to work for us we wanted everyone on side - the city council, the police, the NHS trusts, the multiple drug service providers, the many , the users and even the dealers.

And there came our USP and our ball and chain all in one. In pursuit of a heady and intoxicating mix, we chased access in the way an addict does a high, not knowing when to stop. We might seek to obtain multi-pronged access but how on earth could we maintain it over the course of the filming period, which would go on for well over a year?

Spin forward six months and we are counting access agreements as the 'track changes’ added up and the weeks spent chasing signatures from the bosses began to take their toll. However we feel to make a compelling, rounded, non-judgmental series with the ability to follow compelling narratives we need to have the capacity to be everywhere in the city.

So now we’re good to go now surely? Well no, not by a long way. Now the whole process starts all over again with the professionals who work out in the community with street-level drugs everyday. Their concerns were sky high at first, and with good reason. How could it ever be in the best interest of the vulnerable people they worked with to take part? We had considered this at length and it helped that we shared some of those concerns - and still do today.

Crucially, we found some users who wanted to take part in order to help others, even if it were just one person, not to go down their path. Things then started easing up when they persuaded the professionals on our behalf, vigorously demonstrating that they were aware of the pitfalls, had thought them through and still wanted to go ahead.

We had more than our fair share of challenges along the way. ‘No – we never ever pay contributors’ … ‘It’s absolutely crucial we are clear – we can never encourage you to take drugs in any way, but we are here to witness what’s going on in an unmediated way as possible’ ….‘Can we go over one more time what would happen if you were to get into problems when taking this drug?... ‘Can we run over this consent process again now you are in a lucid state of mind?’ Hmmm – dangerous world this documentary business …

So one year into the production things were in full flow. Although it never felt we were in control, with too many highs and crashing lows to count, we were undoubtedly getting somewhere. We were in with – heroin users, GPs, MPs, drug workers, councillors, crack addicts, staff at detox centres, recreational party animals, homeless drug users, sex workers, children of ex users, scientists, researchers, alternative psychedelic performers and peer mentors - to name but a few.

We had access to the high level institutions and ground-level workers/users, but then we needed to head underground – to the murky world of the dealers. This took a different kind of access negotiation and had an even lower hit rate. We put the word out and would arrange dubious meetings in the most unlikely of places – one surreal rendezvous was set in a café inside a mega DIY store that felt like a scene from Breaking Bad. Sadly the man whose boasts about the finest home produced crack was a no show. Maybe it was a good thing all round.
But bit-by-bit with patience and persistence we found some who did want to share their story.

Today it strikes me that the same issues come up across the board in relation to access whether we were talking to a chief constable or a street dealer. They both ultimately want to know how they could trust us and whether anything negative would happen as a result of them taking part. Good valid questions.

All of the people who took part who wanted to have now seen the finished films and are happy with them. Their trust in us hopefully proves to have been worthwhile. The series will be broadcast for just one period– another means of protecting those who took part.

Sacha Mirzoeff, is 成人论坛 Executive Producer of Drugsland.

•  is co-produced by the  and starts on 成人论坛 Three from Tuesday 14 November, 2017. It will also be broadcast on 成人论坛 One from Tuesday 21 November.
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