Fashion shoot

With documentary-makers these days, it can be hard to tell the difference between faux-naivety and the real thing. (Personally, I blame Louis Theroux.) Take BBC2’s Absolutely Fashion: Inside British Vogue (Thursday), directed and narrated by Richard Macer, who often seems suspiciously dazzled by whatever he sees: the editor’s office! The editor’s chair! He also has a tendency to proudly offer observations that aren’t necessarily as startling as he thinks: that the magazine appears to be largely run by women, for instance.

But where it’s even trickier to decide whether he’s faking or not is when his off-screen voice anxiously wonders whether Alexandra Shulman, the editor in question, wants him there at all — because she so obviously doesn’t. Faced with his questions in the back of taxis, she wears an expression of exquisite suffering, patiently borne. Announcing to the office staff that ‘we’ve got the cameras here’, she adopts a tone not unlike that of a surgeon breaking the bad news to waiting relatives.