Documentaries

Birthgap (2023) Seen on the 26th May 2026, 105 min. Birthgap correctly identifies a real demographic transition: fertility has fallen, parenthood is being delayed, and many rich societies are ageing into historically unusual population structures. However, judged by the standards of demographic science, history of science, and causal inference, the documentary turns a valid demographic pattern into an overdetermined causal story. BirthgapFacts is right to challenge its strongest claims: the evidence does not justify treating unplanned childlessness as the central cause of low fertility everywhere, nor does it justify global “population collapse” language. The scientifically safer conclusion is that low fertility is a multi-causal demographic transition, not a single-cause crisis. 1. What Birthgap gets right: the phenomenon is real The documentary is not inventing the problem. Fertility decline in high-income societies is real and large. The OECD reports that the average total ferti...

Ancient Apocalypse, 2020-2024 Netflix, seen in 2025.

Shifty BBC, 5 Episodes. Seen on 1st May 2026. My Take on Shifty — Adam Curtis, BBC, 2025 Watching Adam Curtis’s Shifty felt less like watching a documentary about Britain and more like watching an X-ray of the world that formed me. The series covers the last decades of the twentieth century, roughly the period in which my own childhood, adolescence and early adulthood were shaped. I found myself not merely learning history, but recognising the emotional, political and aesthetic architecture of my own identity. What struck me most is how Shifty explains the collapse of an old British settlement: the belief that government, institutions, public culture and social reform could organise society in the service of ordinary people. Curtis presents Thatcherism not simply as a political programme, but as a profound redefinition of freedom. Freedom became market choice, self-interest, personal aspiration, consumer credit, private wealth and individual happiness. The state withdrew, finance e...