Sophie Morgan, presenter of Channel 4's new documentary The Experiment, has said she is "100% disturbing" about the show, which has been labelled "easily the most disturbing thing on TV" by The Guardian. The programme, co-hosted with Mat Fraser, explores whether members of the British public could be persuaded by ideas drawn from Nazi ideology if presented as progressive solutions to a modern social 'problem'.
A meticulously constructed experiment
At the heart of the experiment sits SegriLife House, a fake residential facility that appears to provide a caring, budget-friendly approach to supported living for disabled adults. Disabled and neurodivergent actors play residents, while members of the public are invited to visit the facility, unaware that the concepts behind it draw from the Nazi regime's segregation, dehumanisation and systematic murder of disabled people.
Sophie described the show as a hybrid of a historical documentary and a social experiment, recognising the shocking effect it is set to have on audiences. Speaking to the Daily Express, she said: "The film is like a hybrid of a history documentary and a social experiment, and both parts come with a lot of shock. I'm not surprised at what The Guardian called it. It's 100% disturbing."
Disturbing revelations from the killing centre
Sophie singled out the history section, particularly the killing centre where disabled people were mass-murdered in the years preceding the Holocaust, as the part that "really shook" her. She said: "People refer to this part of history as the hidden Holocaust."
A particularly disturbing revelation came when she viewed photographs of those who operated the killing centre. She was confronted with an image of newlyweds who worked at the facility, both complicit in the murders of disabled men, women and children. Sophie recalled: "We were in this killing centre where thousands of disabled people are being mass-murdered and it's been memorialised now, but you can go into where the gas chambers are, and you can see all these pictures of people all over the walls. There's a picture of a couple who've just got married and they've got married whilst also running the killing centre. In their day-to-day work life, they are murdering disabled men, women and children and then on their weekends, at the same place, getting married."
Sophie noted how the images suggested the couple were managing a holiday retreat rather than a death camp, leading her to question how individuals could dehumanise others so easily. She said: "The pictures of the people that ran the killing centres really stuck with me, because I remember thinking, how could you dehumanise people so easily, so willingly? How could this happen? And that was really the question that led to the social experiment that we then conduct."
Mixed reactions from participants and audiences
Sophie maintained that while some participants in the documentary voiced overtly ableist and damaging opinions, others remained on the fence or unsure. She argued that individuals who are readily influenced by propaganda might be less inclined to challenge harmful perspectives, calling it "human nature" and drawing parallels with Nazi Germany.
She said: "The people that come through the experiment, some of them express really ableist and problematic and harmful attitudes. But the ones that were sitting in the middle of the fence and had no real strong opinion, they sort of fall into this bystander category. But the types of people that we are worried about, they are the types of people that are easily influenced and swayed by propaganda. It's not their fault, it's human nature and that's what happened in Nazi Germany, and that's what happens so often in this world. It was the reactions of non-disabled people, towards these ideals, that shocked me the most."
Sophie acknowledged that The Experiment has sparked mixed reactions amongst audiences, with some finding it compelling and others disturbing. She stressed that the disabled community may not find the programme new, saying: "Ableism is alive and well and thriving in all parts of life. I think whilst there's some that are really happy that we've done this and exposed that, there are some that want more. They've said we need more than this. We need action. We don't need experiments. We need a change. And they're not wrong."
