Louis Theroux: Dark States – Murder in Milwaukee had a real sense of despair, review

Louis Theroux is usually the unflustered one. But when a gunshot rang out in the final part of the documentarian’s Dark States (BBC Two), it was his interviewee’s turn to look unfazed. 

“They’re so disrespectful,” said Shawnda, of the people who had just shot at her home from a passing car. She wasn’t shocked, only annoyed. Like almost everyone Theroux met in Wisconsin, Shawnda had an air of resignation and a private arsenal of weapons, from the pistol in her bra to the foot-long gun beside her bathtub.

A mother at 13 and a convicted murderer at 15, she was now running an anti-violence community programme in one of Milwaukee’s most dangerous areas, a small symbol of hope in a place where the homicide rate is 12 times the national average. As ever, Theroux remained a blank sounding-board, asking simple questions such as “How have you been?” sans inflection, then waiting until his interlocutor’s pain flowed out to fill the silence.

Proudly self-sufficient (“I can babysit, shoot a gun and cook at the same damn time!”), Shawnda did her best to keep her foster-children safe in the face of a recent spike in murder rates. But later, over a vodka-and-orange, she sounded almost nostalgic for the days of gang warfare: “In a war, there’s rules of engagement, and those rules have been tossed out the window.” As guns proliferated, she said, more killings were now caused by petty arguments than organised crime.

As Theroux followed the police on patrol, we were more than once confronted by the sight of a young man’s body sprawled on the sidewalk, with blood pooling around it. We could have done with fewer lingering shots of the deceased, and more time spent asking the police hard questions about the racial dynamics of their frequent stop-and-searches.

But the real divide, according to one resident, was between the police and the populace, both sides heavily armed and mutually mistrustful. “It’s not a race war,” said Sedan, whose 23-year-old brother Sylville had been shot and killed by an officer. “It’s not white on black, it’s blue on black.”

The first two instalments of this bleak triptych tackled drugs in West Virginia and sex trafficking in Texas. But tonight’s edition had a real sense of despair, not just capturing the city’s atmosphere but seemingly falling victim to it.

The only defence against gun-crime, we heard from one bereaved local, was more guns (“If Blizz had a gun, he would still be alive”). Without enough context – on how and why the state’s arms laws were relaxed two years ago, for instance, or what might be done about it – these views were left to hang in the air as if unchallenged.

None the less, the close focus on a handful of lives made for an intimate portrait of a city in constant mourning. It’s a shame to see this riveting series end, but Theroux won’t be gone for long: he’s back next Sunday with a new documentary about anorexia. On this form, it should be essential viewing.