Margriet van der Linden

This VPRO's ‘summer classic’ is based on an equally simple and refreshing idea that originated in 1988: When during the summer most of the channels are showing reruns, ask interesting people people to curate their ‘favorite television evening’ and let them clarify the fragments in a long-form interview/conversation. The programme was first aired in 1988. Each episode takes up an entire Sunday evening, lasting typically three hours. It consists of an in-depth studio interview with a notable Dutch, Belgian or other Dutch-speaking foreigner, interspersed with cinema or television footage selected by the guest, which is subsequently discussed. Guests include writers, scientists, television personalities, politicians or business people.

Margriet van der Linden made the six-part series How To Be Gay, in which she travels to countries such as Russia, Lebanon, China and England. She answers the question: what is it like to be gay there? Her journey leads to a series of special and intimate encounters with people who talk about their orientation. To what extent can they be themselves? And what must they do or not do to be accepted?

What is it like to be a man in a country that has lost the war? What is it like to be a man in a country where sex is taboo not only for women but also for men? What's it like to be an old-fashioned playboy in the twenty-first century? And what is it like to be a macho man and to be constantly taunted and insulted? Margriet van der Linden looks for answers to these questions in an attempt to understand today's man.

Margriet van der Linden sketches the often shocking and moving world of European young people. We live in an era rife with concerns: polarization, political instability and oppression. What do young Turkish women do when they are assaulted, raped or shot? What is the situation with the enormous group of Belarusian students in Lithuania who fled the violence of dictator Lukashenko? What inspires the thousands of Moroccan boys who illegally cross the border with Spain every year and for whom hardly anyone is waiting? And how are the Hungarian youth doing, who have to deal with a leader who is slowly but surely throwing democracy overboard?

Margriet van der Linden looks for the voter who can be decisive in the race for the White House: Women in the American suburbs. Who are these women that Trump is pinning his hopes on to get re-elected? Margriet van der Linden, once a correspondent in the US, goes to Bucks County with that question.