Adam Curtis directed the BBC documentary series Pandora’s Box about political and economic ideas.
Pandora’s Box is a six-part documentary series first broadcast by the BBC in 1992. Curtis examines how governments and institutions used scientific, economic, and psychological ideas to manage society during the twentieth century. The episodes cover subjects including nuclear strategy, economists’ influence, and attempts to control public behavior.
The series uses archival footage, interviews, news material, and a strongly argumentative editing style. That approach became characteristic of Curtis’s later documentaries, which often connect political history with culture and mass communication.
The title invokes the familiar Pandora metaphor: opening a container releases forces that cannot easily be controlled. Curtis applies that idea to modern systems and intellectual movements rather than retelling the ancient Greek myth.