{"id":19267,"date":"2023-02-01T08:50:33","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T13:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2023-02-02T09:49:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T14:49:03","slug":"insider-accounts-in-putin-vs-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/insider-accounts-in-putin-vs-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Insider Accounts in Putin vs the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new three-part documentary Putin vs the West<\/em>, from Brook Lapping, debuted earlier this week on BBC Two, with all episodes available on the iPlayer.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrook Lapping has been making series that try to show what it\u2019s like inside the room when the really big political decisions are taken for more years than I\u2019d like to remember,\u201d says Norma Percy, executive producer for Brook Lapping. \u201cThe BBC called us in soon after we delivered the last one\u2014in this case, the BAFTA-shortlisted Trump Takes on the World<\/em>\u2014to ask us what we wanted to do next. We spent a couple of weeks scrabbling around for ideas, but in the end, we needn\u2019t have worried. As soon as we got there, the BBC tore up the list we had put together and suggested we look at Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook Lapping had put a spotlight on Russia in productions twice before: first in 1991 with The Second Russian Revolution<\/em>, an eight-part series that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union through interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and their politburos. Its last series about Russia, broadcast ten years ago, looked at Vladimir Putin and his first decade in power.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in early 2021, Russia seemed an eccentric choice,\u201d Percy recalls. \u201cYes, Putin had taken Crimea in 2014, interfered with U.S. elections in 2016 and poisoned citizens on British soil, but at that moment, relations with Russia were not exactly dominating headlines.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of that, she adds, it seemed rather difficult to execute. \u201cFor Putin, Russia and the West<\/em>, we had spent weeks in the Kremlin with Putin\u2019s men getting them to tell the story, but Russia had become far more dangerous over the years\u2014most of the journalists and fixers we had once worked with were no longer even in the country,\u201d she says. \u201cJo Carr (head of BBC current affairs), however, was not put off: \u2018What you should do is deal with Putin. If you go back to the Western leaders you\u2019ve interviewed across your past series\u2014like Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil<\/em> or Inside Obama\u2019s White House<\/em>\u2014I think you\u2019ll find Russia was one of the main problems they wrestled with over the last decade. And there was rarely ever agreement over the central question: Do we try and make friends or slap on sanctions?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen can an independent producer afford not to listen to a BBC suggestion?\u201d Percy continues. \u201cWe began developing the story. Then, we all know what happened six months later, on February 24, 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

With such a broad scope to examine on this topic, Brook Lapping had the difficult task of deciding what specifically to home in on. \u201cFor us, access is key,\u201d Percy says. \u201cWhen Putin invaded Ukraine halfway through our research, he not only made our work more relevant but also much harder to do. Now, we were asking people to tell us what went on behind closed doors not just for history but while they were dealing with an ongoing war in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

She says, though, that the approach of who to include is simple. \u201cWe get only the people who were there to tell us what happened (no journalists or pundits). Really\u2014no analysis, no finger-pointing, just: What did you say to Putin?\u201d In this case, it is tales from presidents, prime ministers and top officials themselves that form the story told.<\/p>\n

Former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, tells a story about why he decided to make bringing Putin closer to the West a major aim of his foreign policy. The head of the CIA, Bill Burns, recounts his trip to Moscow in the midst of the Russian troop build-up along the border with Ukraine. Boris Johnson, also a former U.K. prime minister, explains how, as the war clouds darkened, he got the Russian president \u201con the blower\u201d to try and talk him down. Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, shares details of a frank conversation with his wife as the Russian bombs began to fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deal with only what happened and how it happened,\u201d Percy says. \u201cBut I hope having watched it, [viewers will] understand why it happened as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook Lapping\u2019s Putin vs the West<\/em> for BBC Two is a co-production with Les Films d\u2019Ici and ARTE France. The series is being distributed internationally by BBC Studios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norma Percy, executive producer for Brook Lapping, talks about developing the new docuseries and the value of featuring high-level insiders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":19268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,69],"tags":[699,4590,6955,6956],"class_list":["post-19267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-bbc-two","tag-brook-lapping","tag-norma-percy","tag-putin-vs-the-west","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nInsider Accounts in Putin vs the West - TVREAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/insider-accounts-in-putin-vs-the-west\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Insider Accounts in Putin vs the West - 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