It's a well-known claim that anyone who was sentient at the time remembers where they were when John F Kennedy, or John Lennon, was shot. I think the same holds true for really powerful and life-changing pieces of television.

Yes, of course, you'd probably be in your living room, watching telly. But a programme that strikes at your heart and conscience inevitably leaves a mark that transcends the banality of your physical surroundings. For instance, I can recall quite acutely even now, more than 20 years later, the sheer bafflement and horror I felt as I watched A Complaint of Rape, an episode of Roger Graef's Police, a fly-on-the-wall series in which he and co-director Charles Stewart followed the everyday doings of Thames Valley Police.

In A Complaint of Rape, Stewart and Graef captured a group of male detectives brow beating a woman into dropping her rape accusation. It was an astonishing piece of television. The men were relentlessly, grotesquely unsympathetic and dismissive. The obviously distressed woman, who had no emotional support of any kind, unsurprisingly gave in.

Thankfully, the British viewing public's condemnation of such dreadful treatment was immediate and vocal. Police forces across the country, including of course the thoroughly shamed Thames Valley force, changed the way such women were dealt with. Rape suites, consideration and respect have since become the norm.

I've been a huge fan of all things Roger Graef ever since, and was delighted to be in the audience at the BAFTA recently when he accepted his thoroughly deserved, long-time-coming, BAFTA Fellowship.

Graef is one of television's true pioneers, a man of great vision and commitment who can drive truely innovative documentaries like Police, and more recently the award-winning Feltham Sings, into the television schedules. It's also worth remembering that documentaries can actually change lives and perceptions, because today the term "documentary" is applied so loosely that it's become almost meaningless. Documentaries should take us to places we really would rather not go, like this week when The Protectors from Roger Graef's Films of Record company, looks at the work of those who monitor sex offenders. It's calm, sober, thoughful and unexpectedly moving. Above all, it leaves the viewer trying to answer possibly unanswerable questions long after the credits have rolled. Good documentary producers make us think. Roger Graef - we salute you.

© Radio Times 2004

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