The Real Room 101 is a shallow look at one of the concepts from George Orwell's 1984. If you've discovered its existence by browsing, don't bother to go look for it. It doesn't dig very deep and doesn't tell us anything really interesting. The setting of the book was largely based on London just after the war. So, mixed with a few interviews we get to see a room 101 in a building where George Orwell worked for the BBC during the war. An artist is making a cast of the inside of the room, regardless whether it is the true inspiration for room 101 or not - as she herself remarks, it has windows, so it can't be. Or was it perhaps his fascist public school, and does the interrogator echo his disturbed relationship with his father? We're not told. The interrogator's name of O'Brian 'clearly' being a reference to catholics and guilt was new for me, but then it goes of to the obligatory "yes, look how many of it has come true" bit. Instead of acknowledging how many of the book's predictions have come true, some real info would have been nice. For example, apparently, in the days of the Cold War, the head of the East German secret police arranged for himself to have room number 101. But that story isn't told. All in all, this documentary doesn't come from the Ministry of Truth, but instead was written, directed, and produced in-house by the Ministry of Wasting Time with Uninformative Shows.
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