Lives Less Ordinary
BBC
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Have you ever locked eyes with a stranger and wondered, "What’s their story?" Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected. Extraordinary stories from around the world.
Beschikbare afleveringen
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Me, dad and the zombie chickens
Filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman railed against Hollywood his whole career as the founder of cult B-movie production house, Troma, while his daughter Lily-Hayes dreamt only of fitting in. Lloyd Kaufman has been the father of anti-establishment... -
Growing up black in a white family – the truth behind my birth
M People star Andrew Lovell’s home life hid a terrible – yet beautiful – secret. It would take him decades to find out the truth. At the height of his fame, drummer Andrew ‘Shovell’ Lovell had everything he’d dreamed of: sex, drugs and... -
Music was my salvation: the homeless man and the piano
While Francois Pierron was homeless in London he taught himself to play a public piano at St Pancras train station – from scratch. His mastery of music helped change his future. Francois had a difficult start in life. He was abandoned... -
Hercules: the grizzly bear who became family
Maggie Robin raised a bear cub who grew into an extraordinary companion. When Maggie Robin and her wrestler husband Andy brought home a bear cub in 1970s Scotland, their friends thought they were mad. But the couple raised him as one... -
Sects, lies and videotape: a Syrian story, part 2
While filming in rebel-held Syria, Loubna Mrie is falsely accused of being a spy – an accusation that spirals into a life-threatening ordeal, triggering the deepest loss of her life. In 2011, Loubna Mrie broke from her loyalist family... -
Sects, lies and videotape: a Syrian story, part 1
From a powerful Alawite family in Syria, Loubna Mrie trusted the Assad regime – until witnessing its violent crackdown led her to defy loyalty and secretly film the uprising. In 2011, 20‑year‑old Loubna Mrie was an English literature... -
The couple who foiled New Zealand’s biggest drugs plot
An ordinary couple foiled the country's biggest drugs deal, all by doing a good deed. It involves a boat, a fake funeral at sea and the criminal underworld's least able seamen. That ordinary couple of 35 years, Ed and Heather we're... -
I bought Macclesfield FC while drunk and it saved my life
Rob Smethurst bought a bankrupt football club while his life was unravelling – then they went on to make football history and save him in the process. Entrepreneur Rob Smethurst never planned to become the owner of a football club. In... -
Colm Tóibín: How an Irish boy with a stammer found his voice
Colm Tóibín is a celebrated Irish writer, but as a child words didn't come easily. Navigating grief as a boy when his father died, he developed a stammer. Instead of talking, Colm watched and listened, collecting stories that wove their... -
The gay Kenyan boyband star who refused to be defeated
Willis Chimano is one of Kenya’s biggest pop stars. With the boyband Sauti Sol, he’s won a string of awards and even danced with President Barack Obama. But behind the success, Chimano had a secret: being gay in a country where gay sex... -
Laughter saved me: the comedian turning tragedy into comedy
When she was 14, Krystal Evans survived a lethal house fire. Years later, to come to terms with what she’d experienced, she turned it into a stand-up show. The women in Krystal's family have always been funny, she says; her mother was... -
Living a lie: discovering my dad faked who he was
Joanne Briggs had always thought of her dad as a bit of a superhero. But he was hiding a dark secret. She only saw him a couple of times a year during her childhood in the UK, but that was because Professor Michael Briggs was off...