Reputations

Pope Pius XII is the most controversial Pope of recent times. His reputation depends on the answer to one question - why did he remain all but silent throughout the Holocaust? This film has, for the first time, tracked down key people who knew him. Eye-witnesses, who told the Vatican at the time about the mass-murder of Jews, give evidence about the response they received from the Pope. Their bitter frustration is still keenly felt. Others who owe their lives to the Pope speak out in his praise.

At his peak, A.J.P. Taylor was the most famous English-speaking historian in the world, speaking direct to the television camera without any notes. But the don was denied what he really wanted: Oxford's top history job. Was he the victim of a hidebound establishment, or was he too much in love with the media limelight?

Fashion designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel devoted her life to becoming the symbol of chic. But behind her public image, she hid a secret past as a nightclub singer and mistress to rich admirers, and, during the Second World War, a sinister involvement with Nazi Germany. Chanel has been dead for nearly 25 years but the fashion house she founded is more successful than ever. Was the reputation she constructed her greatest creation?

The last programme in the series focuses on Pablo Escobar, the Colombian cocaine king who was shot dead in December 1993. The most notorious gangster since Al Capone , Escobar is still a hero to many in his home town of Medellfn. Born into poverty, he soon turned from petty crime to drug smuggling and, by using the terror techniques of murder and torture, amassed a fortune estimated at$4 billion. Award-winning director Bill Cran and a film crew travelled to Bogota and Medellin, two of the most dangerous cities in the world, to interview members of Escobar's family, victims of his threats and kidnappings, agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency and Escobar's fellow criminals. The result is a portrait of the man behind the gangster image of "el patron", the boss.