10 Documentaries That Were WRONG About Everything

10 Documentaries That Were WRONG About Everything

Caitlin Johnson

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and today we’re looking at documentaries that made spurious claims and contained glaring factual errors.

“Joe Wicks: Licensed to Kill” (2025)

The Body Coach teamed up with Dr Chris in this 2025 documentary, which did little more than scaremonger about common foods. Dr Chris is a well-known speaker about “ultra-processed foods” advocating for people to cut down on the poorly-defined food group, despite the cost-of-living crisis making that harder and harder to actually achieve. Dr Chris also went out of his way to frighten Wicks about certain ingredients, namely emulsifiers and preservatives – never mind that preserving food is something people have been doing for thousands of years. After all that, they make a protein bar that they claim is “dangerous”, naming it the “Killer Bar”, despite everything in it being approved by the government and within safe levels.

“Yesterday’s Men” (1971)

It used to be that even if a prime minister lost an election, they would often still stay on as leader of their party – and potentially even return to Number 10 one day. That was what happened to Harold Wilson, who was prime minister twice. But if you’d listened to the BBC in 1971 when it broadcast this programme, clearly mocking Wilson and the Labour party after they lost the 1970 general election, you probably WOULD have thought that Wilson’s political career was basically over. That absolutely wasn’t the case, as he triumphantly returned in 1974. In the meantime, the BBC was faced with fury from the Opposition for making a clearly partisan programme, saying that they were tricked by the producers.

“Maggie’s Militant Tendency” (1984)

Over a decade after “Yesterday’s Men”, and a similar row broke out – only this time, the BBC had the Tories in its line of sight, in an episode of “Panorama”. In the 1960s, it was widely reported that a far-left group known as Militant had infiltrated the Labour Party. Twenty years later, the BBC investigated similar claims that far-RIGHT groups had infiltrated the Tories, naming some of the MPs allegedly linked to those groups. The MPs in question, Neil Hamilton and Gerald Haworth, were so outraged that they subsequently sued the BBC for libel. The trial was eventually settled, with Haworth and Hamilton getting forty grand in damages each.

“Unlawful Killing” (2011)

This bizarre documentary was financed entirely by Mohamed al-Fayed, who’s now facing posthumous allegations of sexual assault from employees of Harrods – and many more women. Made by Welsh actor Keith Allen, father of Lily Allen, “Unlawful Killing” supposedly lifts the lid on the conspiracy to assassinate Princess Diana in 1997. The film genuinely suggests that the royals covered up the details of Diana’s death, led by a cabal of gangsters – the Queen, Princess Margaret, and of course the mastermind, Prince Philip. It never received a true theatrical release, instead only being screened once at Cannes, but has still resurfaced online. The reason it was never released? It was unable to be insured against potential legal action.

“Private ADHD Clinics Exposed” (2023)

In 2023, “Panorama” released another controversial episode, tackling the increasing rates of ADHD diagnosis, particularly in adults. The journalist fronting the show, Rory Carson, went to three different private clinics, all of which diagnosed him with ADHD after an assessment, apparently casting doubt on the efficacy of these diagnoses – well, unless he’s also one of the many underdiagnosed people in the UK. People with ADHD and many charities immediately hit back, saying that the programme did harm to people with ADHD by suggesting they’re being given fake diagnoses. There were complaints, many of which were upheld by the BBC’s internal executive complaints unit, conceding that the programme was intentionally misleading and didn’t show any positive examples of ADHD diagnosis.

Enjoying this video? Be sure to tune into WatchMojoUK’s 24/7 livestream for more British content. Scan the QR code on screen to join us for live, non-stop Blighty.

“The Great ADHD Myth” (2026)

A double-whammy of ADHD programmes, three years after “Panorama”, Channel 4 apparently wanted in on the action, and made its own documentary where it sent a sceptic to see if he could get privately diagnosed with ADHD. More problematic, though, was the programme’s experiment, where it tried to see whether a combination of yoga and being outside would alleviate a young boy’s ADHD symptoms so that he could stop taking his medication. Again, the programme was hit with complaints, especially when it ended by revealing that, after filming, he’d gone back on his medication and his schoolwork had then improved, disproving the programme’s entire thesis. Neurodiversity charities and experts were outraged.

“Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club” (2026)

She may be the country’s most beloved popular historian, but that doesn’t mean Lucy Worsley gets everything right. In a 2026 series, Worsley decided to tackle Victorian London’s second most infamous serial killer, the Thames Torso Murderer. Much of the programme assumes that the original investigation failed because sexist detectives botched it, except, at every single turn, when Worsley and her murder club think they’ve found a fresh lead, it turns out that Scotland Yard got there first. Nearly all their “new” lines of enquiry had already been followed by police at the time. Even the man they point to as the killer, James Crick, was arrested and convicted of attempted murder on the Thames in 1889. It seems that the Met actually WEREN’T incompetent.

“I Believe in UFOs” (2010)

In 2010, soap star Danny Dyer decided to pivot to documentaries, making this film with BBC Three aimed at getting to the truth about UFOs. Early on, Dyer’s called out to investigate one of the quintessential alien occurrences, a crop circle. Bafflingly, he’s actually told by his fellow alien believer how the hoaxers who make crop circles do it – by stamping on the wheat with a wooden board – but insists that this can’t be how this one was made, because the wheat hasn’t died. He eventually goes to the crop circlers at the local pub and asks how it’s done, and is forced to concede that it probably is humans – they just can’t admit it because it’s criminal damage.

“Hitler’s DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator” (2025)

In 2025, Channel 4 made the bold move of commissioning a programme that aimed to sequence Adolf Hitler’s genome and see if he could be diagnosed with anything. Not only did they want to know whether history’s worst dictator might have had ADHD – making this yet another spurious documentary on neurodivergence – but also wanted to find an answer to the long conspiracy theory about him secretly being Jewish. Or, at the very least, having Jewish ancestry somewhere further back in his family tree. It was utterly outrageous, and an example of a programme conceived entirely to generate outrage – which barely happened, incidentally, because hardly anybody watched it.

“The Great Global Warming Swindle” (2007)

Our final entry is yet another bit of alternative programming from Channel 4, a documentary from 2007 that wanted to give equal weight to the evidence AGAINST climate change. Never mind that climate change is a settled debate according to all scientists, this film made the case that the evidence was wrong, drawing its own conclusions. Ofcom received hundreds of complaints and upheld them, saying that broadcasting impartiality was indeed broken in some sections. Some individual contributors to the documentary also complained, saying they’d been misrepresented and taken out of context. Many thought that Ofcom’s ruling didn’t go far enough, too.

Let us know in the comments what documentaries have made you the angriest.