Video Diaries
1990
📺 9 Seasons
🎬 72 Episodes
📅 Returning Series
🌐 EN
Documentary
Video Diaries was a BBC television programme produced by the Community Programme Unit. The series of programmes was created in 1990 by producer Jeremy Gibson. The programme's production team offered members of the public basic video training and ongoing support. The diarist was then left to gather their material with a camcorder. They would then have further support in editing and post-production
During 1991 - 1992 Bob Long was a producer. By 1993 the programmes was developed into the Video Nation project.
Seasons
Season 1
Successful young novelist Robert Wilson goes home to Belfast after six years of voluntary exile in England. By turns hilarious, miserable, angry and hopeful his 'diary' is a refreshingly honest account of his tribulations as he asks himself and his friends, 'Is there a worthwhile future in Belfast?'
Season 2
Kevin Allen, a 28-year-old actor and long time 'student of the game', has made a unique fan's-eye view of the 1990 World Cup football finals in Italy in this 'road movie'. Armed only with a small video camera, he set out to travel and live on the campsites with Bobby Robson's unwanted and unloved army of England supporters. What emerged is an epic of chaotic wit, intrigue, fear and despair, and a deep affection for the game.
Season 3
Justice Sucks is 16-year-old Vonnie's story. At 12, she was taken into care by the social services after being abused by her stepfather. Thus began an unhappy journey through a succession of children's homes. Vonnie uses her diary to expose her own pain and to highlight the inadequacies of the system.
Season 4
Finding herself pregnant at 14, Natalie never even thought about having an abortion.
Instead she set out to live up to her responsibility with the support of her boyfriend and family. But things aren't going as smoothly as she hoped as she fights to keep her young family together, and living in one crowded room of a council flat doesn't make life any easier.
Season 5
The first of eight programmes offers an unprecedented insight into the lives of the mentally ill, as told by a woman who has been diagnosed schizophrenic.
Season 6
Omerjit Brar, a 19-year-old aspiring model, longs for excitement in her life. In spite of being discouraged by a top agency, she enters the Miss Asia UK competition to help her career.
Romantically, however, her life has turned upside down: the suitable boy her parents have arranged for her to marry has a rival for her affections - a new boy called Ranjit.
Season 7
The documentary series of personal video histories begins a four-part run with an insight into the life and thoughts of Joseph Erber, a child with a mild form of autism. Last year, he became the youngest composer ever to have his work performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
Season 8
Hank Wangford and his band travel to meet real cowboys in the Falklands during Camp
Sports - the week in which the islanders let their hair down after a year's work on farms.
As well as uncovering a passion for country music, Wangford encounters the local wildlife, including penguins, dolphins and albatrosses, and displays his aptitude for shearing sheep.
Season 9
Welsh hill farmer William Jenkins records his ongoing struggle to make a living.
Network
BBC Two
Production
BBC