An invaluable trawl through the worst hypocrisies of the past

Hindsight is obviously 20/20, but it is now impossible to see Jimmy Savile as anything other than the leering predator he was.

- Chris Broom on Shifty

So when Adam Curtis chooses to open his current documentary series Shifty with the DJ/sex offender ushering a group of children into Margaret Thatcher's office, it curdles the blood when he turns to the camera and grins as the door is shut, leaving the camera crew outside.

There's no suggestion that anything untoward happened in this instance, but this use of the now-loathed Savile with the wildly polarising former PM is typical of Curtis.

The documentary-maker loves nothing more than taking old footage to illuminate current society or to show how we got from there to here.

Over six hour-long parts, Shifty shows "how over the past 40 years in Britain extreme money and hyper-individualism came together in an unspoken alliance". Thatcher's rise to and hold on power and her long shadow is the prism through which he runs this loose narrative.

As is typical with his long-form documentaries, you can view each episode as a series of interlinking mini docs running in parallel with each other - the narrative hopping back and forth between them.