BBC Drama

The Eichmann Show (2015x1)

Air date: Jan 20, 2015

The behind-the-scenes true life story of a groundbreaking producer, Milton Fruchtman, and blacklisted TV director Leo Hurwitz who, overcoming enormous obstacles, set out to capture the testimony of one of the war's most notorious Nazis, Adolf Eichmann. He is accused of executing the 'final solution' and organising the murder of 6 million Jews. This is the extraordinary story of how the trial came to be televised and the team that made it happen. Filming at his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, their production becomes the world's first ever global TV documentary series, the first time the horror of the camps has been heard directly from the mouths of its victims. Edited daily and broadcast in Germany, America, Israel and 34 other countries, people fainted when they saw it on TV. Never before has there been such drama in the use of cameras, their positioning, or the revolutionary effect of operators being able to adjust frame and position to match subject and content.