The Experiment, Indeed

Lauren Morris writes:

Channel 4 is exploring whether members of the British public would object to a modern residential facility for those with disabilities that’s actually run under Nazi-inspired conditions in a new documentary tonight. The Experiment, hosted by actor Mat Fraser and disability rights activist Sophie Morgan, looks at whether people could be “persuaded by ideas drawn from Nazi ideology if they were presented as progressive solutions to a modern social “problem” in the stand-alone programme.

In the documentary, members of the public are invited to tour fake residential home SegriLife House, believing it to be a real facility which offers “a radical model of supported living”. Those visiting SegriLife House see its messaging and policies in action, with disabled and neurodivergent actors playing its residents as part of the experiment. However, the touring public have no idea that its protocols are actually based on how the Nazi regime treated disabled people in 1930s and 1940s Germany. 

“Drawing on Nazi propaganda and the real ideas and language used to justify the systematic segregation, forced sterilisation and extermination of disabled people in Nazi-era Germany, The Experiment explores how such dangerous ideas can be repackaged and made to appear acceptable,” Channel 4 said ahead of the documentary airing tonight. Meanwhile, reactions by members of the public taking part in the show will be filmed and shown as part of the documentary as hosts Fraser and Morgan watch from behind the scenes. 

“It was important for us to finally bring the catastrophic history of Aktion T4 and the Nazis’ persecution of disabled people to our television screens, but more importantly we wanted to test whether the British public could be persuaded by similar propaganda today – to believe that disabled people are disposable, or less deserving of a place in society,” the presenters said in a joint statement. Aktion T4 was a Nazi-era programme for the systematic mass-murder of people with disabilities. “Through the fantastic dedication of our disabled actors and the production team who brought the disturbing world of SegriLife to life, we were able to put that question to the test.” They added that with disability rights currently “under threat in the UK and around the world”, they hope the documentary will show that “the chances of repeating the past are far higher than we think”.

The Experiment received guidance from Access All Areas and the Graeae Theatre Company – both theatre companies which are made up of disabled and neurodivergent artists – during filming. The documentary also sees Fraser and Morgan visit former Nazi killing centre, Austria’s Hartheim Castle and Museum, to tell the stories of the hundreds of thousands of disabled people who were murdered by the regime. Actor and writer Fraser, who was born with phocomelia after his mother took the drug thalidomide during pregnancy before it was discovered to cause birth defects, started his career with the Graeae Theatre Company and has since appeared in American Horror Story: Freak Show, His Dark Materials and Netflix’s Kaos.

Presenter Morgan made her TV debut in BBC Two’s 2004 reality show Beyond Boundaries, just nine months after a road traffic accident left her paralysed from the waist down at the age of 18. She later competed on BBC Three’s Britain’s Missing Top Model and has since presented a number of documentaries including Licence to Kill, Living Wild: How to Change Your Life and Dispatches. The Experiment airs tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.