Grayson Perry swaps his pots for a notebook and spends three weeks inside worlds where testosterone drips off the walls. First stop is a mixed-martial-arts gym in the North-East: he trains, corner-boys and interviews fighters who measure self-worth in broken noses and ticket sales. The artist’s tapestries of their bodies, stitched with slogans like "MAN UP", become mirrors they can’t punch.
Week two finds him in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, with a police firearms unit and a family whose men have not worked for three generations. Perry eats chips in a riot van, listens to officers describe keeping the peace in a town stripped of industry, then sits in a living-room where a father hands his 14-year-old son a boxing glove to solve arguments. The same father weeps when he admits he has never told the boy he loves him.
In the final film Perry crosses the Thames to the Square Mile, dining with hedge-fund managers who earn bonuses larger than the cage fighters’ yearly purses. Between spreadsheets and strip-clubs he asks whether control, not violence, is now the badge of maleness. Each programme ends with Perry firing a new ceramic work: a gilded revolver for the police, a tiny bronze bull for the traders, a stitched fighter on his knees. The series aired on Channel 4 from 5 to 19 May 2016.
Production Details
Channel 4 / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 2016
Created by: Grayson Perry
Main Cast
Grayson Perry as Self
