Louis Theroux's Sexual Assault Documentary The Night In Question Is On BBC Tonight

Louis Theroux's much-anticipated documentary, The Night In Question, will air on BBC Two tonight.

The nation's favourite documentarian heads to the US to explore the subject of sexual assault on campus, speaking to the alleged perpetrators that are being investigated by their universities.

Speaking to LADbible, Theroux said there were times when it looked like the documentary may never be completed.

He said: "This is a programme we've been working on for more than a year, actively researching it. The first interview was not much less than a year ago. There were times when we thought we might never be able to see it to completion so it was nice to have something to show for all that work."

Explaining why he decided to broach the sensitive subject of sexual assault, the 48-year-old said it felt like a 'natural subject' for him to explore.

He said: "I suppose for my own purposes, ever since I started out in making programmes, I've tended to look at people like Ku Klux Klan and sort of people in cults. I've always tended to look at people who are on the slightly more dubious side of the fence if you like, not exclusively but that's tended to be where I've gone.

"It's a kind of attempt to try and understand the psychology of people who do things that are either deeply wrong or controversial or filled with angst.

"So it felt like a kind of natural subject for me to examine people who'd been accused of and in many cases have done things they shouldn't have done, sexual misconduct.

"At the same time, I think we were all aware we needed to respect the perspective of the victims and so there were many, many conversations about how we balanced it - whilst applying a forensic standard to the people accused and then also giving a voice to the people who had experienced sexual misconduct, who'd actually been victims of either a sexual assault or rape."

The programme focuses on the story of Saif Khan, a neuroscience major who accused of raping a fellow student, who was found not guilty in court but was subsequently investigated independently by university.

As to whether Theroux felt any sympathy towards the likes of Khan and the other alleged perpetrators he met, the award-winning filmmaker highlighted the difficulty of ever knowing the whole story with regard to such assaults.

He said: "My take on that is I think some of these cases are difficult, and we had a Title 9 investigator at the university in New Jersey, more or less saying exactly that, that it's not easy to find out exactly what happened in these cases. And I suppose that's intrinsically the nature of sexual assault, where there are only two people present usually, and so you have to look forensically at other circumstances.

"I was straining very much to be fair and balanced in my approach to the people accused. I didn't want to rush to judgement, in criminal courts there's a presumption of innocence.

"Now we weren't really looking at it from a criminal perspective, more in the context of campus investigations, but I think the urge to try and give people a fair hearing is a good one, so I did try and apply that standard."

Louis Theroux: The Night in Question will air on BBC Two tonight at 9pm and will also be available on iPlayer.

Topics: TV and Film, BBC, louis theroux, UK Entertainment, Documentary

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey