Eminent Monsters

25 years ago, Viagra kickstarted the second sexual revolution and a controversy unlike any drug before it. Following trials in 1992 for a compound believed to alleviate symptoms for angina, Pfizer’s first in-patient trial for the drug, then known as UK92480, begin in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales. It isn’t long before volunteer patients report having unexpected erections - fast forward ten years and word of the adverse side effect has travelled from Wales to New York resulting in Viagra’s first release in 1998 with orders soon exceeding predictions. What follows is the big story of the little blue pill.

In Afghanistan, 2011, Royal Marine Alexander Blackman shot an unarmed Taliban insurgent in the chest. What's the true story behind one of the most controversial events in the war on terror?

This landmark documentary examines the ten years between 1979 and 1989 when Edinburgh faced a frightening new epidemic and was dubbed the ‘Aids capital of Europe’. Meeting the doctors, heroin addicts, police and locals caught up in events they could barely understand, this documentary reveals how events thousands of miles away had a massive impact on Scotland’s capital. The film captures the sense of panic as the mysterious new disease terrifies the general public and hears from medical professionals who raced against time to attempt to discover how the disease was being spread. Hearing from the police officers who seized needles from addicts as evidence, believing it a necessary tactic in the 'war on drugs', to those in the community who desperately pleaded for needle exchanges to thwart the spread of infectious diseases, this documentary reveals the battles that were raging in the streets of Edinburgh and the corridors of power.

On 21 December 1988, passenger jet Pan Am 103 was blown up over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground. It was the UK’s largest crime scene and remains the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil. In this documentary, families and loved ones, most of whom are speaking for the first time, tell the deeply personal stories of six victims, each with their own hopes and dreams.

On 13 March 1996, a gunman walked into a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane near Stirling, and shot dead 16 pupils and their teacher in a Primary 1 gym class. To date, it is one of the deadliest firearms atrocities in the UK. In a landmark film to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, 'Dunblane: Our Story' interviews many people who have never before talked publicly about what happened on that day.