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Discovery Channel Documentaries - Jekyll and Hyde: The True Story

Seizoen: 2004 - Aflevering: 4 / 417 - Eerst uitgezonden: Onbekend - Episode ID: 491020

In 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a best selling book, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It told the terrifying story of the power of addiction and the monsters that lurk within us all. It became an instant success and changed the face of horror stories forever. It was the first time that literature had depicted evil residing in someone rather than an objective character, a creature. In the novel Henry Jekyll, a respected doctor, concocts a potion to release his inner evil and becomes Mr Hyde. It was a book surrounded in mystery. Robert Louis Stevenson had been known as the charming author of beloved children's stories such as a Child's Garden of Verses. What could this mild-mannered man know of inner demons and the power of evil and addiction? But just as Dr Jekyll had two faces, so to did Stevenson. He had been obsessed, since childhood, with the notorious Scotsman William Deacon Brodie (known as Deacon), a legendary sociopath who lived 100 years earlier. By day, Deacon was a gentleman, a respected citizen with wealth and power. By night he was a compulsive gambler, sex addict and a criminal. In this film, the true story of Robert Louis Stevenson is revealed. A brilliant but tortured soul, Stevenson was born into a wealthy Victorian family. A sensitive and sickly child, plagued by nightmares and lung disease. He was raised by a God-fearing spinster nurse who attended to his spiritual health and administered what became a life long regime of drugs. It was her stories of Deacon that planted the seeds of a dark obsession.