Louis Theroux has had the sort of year a droll documentarian might regard as a promising subject for their next project.
He was widely criticised for a conversation on his podcast with musician Bobby Vylan of the rap duo Bob Vylan, where he ignored the artist’s attempts to talk about race and privilege – Theroux is white and privately educated – in favour of a bizarre rumination on his favourite chocolate-based breakfast cereals.
That has been followed by a tetchy interview with a British newspaper in which he seemed impatient with the sort of grilling he has himself given to figures such as Jimmy Savile and the star of Netflix’s Tiger King. The interview was by way of promoting his debut film for Netflix, Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere (Netflix, from Wednesday).
You can see why he would be nervous about his first venture beyond the cloistered world of British broadcasting into the wild west of global streaming. He certainly comes across as deeply tentative on camera as he goes about his inquiries into the online culture of toxic masculinity as embodied by noxious influencers such as Andrew Tate.
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Theroux doesn’t interview Tate, but instead spends time with a group of Tate mates: young men often from challenging backgrounds who see performative misogyny as a passport to fame and wealth.
It is truly grim stuff, but it is never clear whether Theroux’s detached style is the right way of approaching the horrors of the manosphere. The documentary needs more anger and surely more female input.
It’s all very well for Theroux to be mildly discombobulated on behalf of women, but often this feels like a conversation about misogyny without any contribution from the people at whom the hate is directed.
Still, what’s on screen is vile enough. In Marbella, Theroux spends time with Harrison Sullivan, the son of an English rugby international and a livestreamer who turns every interaction he has in Spain into a moment to be monetised. He’s full of troubling banter – saying how he teaches “boys to be proper boys … not these soyboy gimps” and jokingly describes a female housemate as his “dishwasher” only for his braggadocio to evaporate when his mother flies in for a visit.
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Theroux later travels to Miami where he meets Myron Gaines, a broadcaster and author of the self-help book Why Women Deserve Less. Gaines believes in one-way monogamy – he should be allowed to play the field while his partner remains faithful – but denies he is misogynistic. “Misogyny would be the hatred of women. I love women and I understand them.”
As you might expect of men who spend all their time banging on about their “alpha” credentials, in person they often come across as insecure and needy – and paranoid about whether Theroux is going to do a “hit piece” on them.
Actually, he seems more interested in their domestic arrangements, quizzing Myron and his girlfriend Angie about their open relationship. He drills into the details of Louisiana influencer Justin Waller – who has connections to Andrew Tate’s online business school – and his wife about his belief in “one-way monogamy”.
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Theroux’s fish-out-of-water interviewing style works best when he is speaking to individuals who are unaware of their own ridiculousness.
But the problem with the people he meets here is they are so over the top that drily documenting their behaviour feels like a waste of time. They are performing a version of themselves to the camera for clicks. Politely undercutting them can only go so far.
He also doesn’t seem all that interested in the teenagers and young men lapping up this content. The only moment we get a sense of how these views affect younger people is when he and New York manosphere influencer Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, aka Sneako, run into fans of Sneako during a late-night walk.
After the Bobby Vylan podcast and that odd Guardian interview, chalk this one down as another Theroux encounter that isn’t all that it might have been.
