Seriously...

Big money, glamorous work trips abroad, and becoming your own boss - the world of door-to-door selling and chugging on the high street has been rebooted for the social media age.

The industry has been around for decades, but revenues have seen a boost over the last few years and it is now worth £2.6bn a year in the UK.

Some direct selling firms in the UK are jumping on the popularity of trends such as hustle culture to recruit young, ambitious people into entry-level jobs in ‘marketing’ or ‘management’ and to work with big, well-known, clients.

But as Lora Jones finds out, the reality is very different. She finds keen young people who have been sold the dream, only to find themselves working 80-hour weeks - for low rates of pay.

So how exactly is that possible - and what's the set-up that can reel in so many hungry young recruits? And what protection do they really have from exploitation?

Reporter: Lora Jones

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the world's worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984.

For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time.

Episode 5. The Fatal Night

As the city slept on the night of the 2nd December 1984, a huge leak of lethal methyl isocyanate escaped from the Bhopal Union Carbide chemical plant. Keswani realises his worst fears have come to pass. All his warnings have been ignored and now people are dying in their thousands before him. Union Carbide refuses to divulge what gas has been released and hospital doctors are helpless, not knowing what treatment to administer desperate patients.

After the tragedy, Rajkumar Keswani is honoured with India's most prestigious award for journalism. In his acceptance speech he said he was receiving this award for his greatest journalistic failure.

Narrator Narinder Samra

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worlds worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984.

For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time.

Episode 4. Bhopal on the Brink of Disaster

Keswani decides he must get the attention of law makers and show them his evidence. His safety concerns are raised in the State Assembly but the labour minister at the time bats them away giving Keswani the sense that Union Carbide is unimpeachable.

He then petitions the Supreme Court of India, but gets no reply.

Feeling somewhat defeated and with increasing financial woes, Keswani decides to take a steady job at a newspaper in a nearby city.

But soon enough his conscience drags him back to Bhopal where he writes to the editors of national newspapers. He gets a big break, publishing a comprehensive account of his findings in a leading national daily. He waits for a response.

Narrator Narinder Samra

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worlds worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984.

For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time.

Episode 3. Friendly Business

The more Keswani investigates the more he finds a cosy relationship between Union Carbide and local politicians and journalists. He's determined to expose the nepotism he uncovers but yet again, his written warning to the city falls on deaf ears. His friends and family don't believe him either, apart from his wife. Money troubles don't help. But Keswani is sure he has truth on his side, and sets his sights on the highest court in the land.

Narrator Narinder Samra

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worlds worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984.

For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time.

Episode 2. The Smell of Grass

Keswani digs deeper and discovers that a town planning order to relocate the chemical plant to an industrial zone, away from densely populated areas, was ignored. Union leaders smuggle him into the factory where he sees first hand the lack of safety controls and general disrepair. He learns more about the chemicals being manufactured as pesticides inside Union Carbide and understands the danger if they were to leak.

He sits down to write his first 'Rapat' newspaper article under the headline 'Save, Please Save this City', and waits for a response.

Narrator Narinder Samra

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worlds worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984.

For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time.

Episode 1. A Friend Dies

Keswani is the kind of journalist who finds his stories on the ground, talking to people in his native Bhopal. One evening he learns from his friend Ashraf, a worker at the Union Carbide chemical plant, that there are regular safety lapses and leaks. Shortly afterwards, Ashraf dies when he's exposed to lethal gases. A grief stricken Keswani decides he must find the truth behind safety concerns at the plant. But when questioning government officials he finds nothing but support for the multinational company that had chosen Bhopal as its base. He hears more worrying accounts from local union officials and when they are published in a small article, retribution follows. Keswani feels sure that something troubling is going on behind the scenes.

Narrator Narinder Samra

Art by women is literally undervalued. The highest price achieved by a contemporary female artist is $12.4m, while it is $91m for a man. If a painting is signed by a man it goes up in value, signed by a woman it goes down. We might expect this historically, but as the majority of art students today are women, why is there such a gender value gap now? To untangle this mystery, Mary Ann Sieghart enters a thrilling world of glitzy, high-stake auctions and make-or-break gallery decisions. She lifts the lid on the opaque world of art valuation, explores how punters react to genderless AI art, and uncovers historic collusion and contemporary bias. She asks if male artists are actually better than women and why, in the bible of the art world today, there is just one woman mentioned, as a footnote. Pinning down work being done to level this playing field, Mary Ann talks to the galleries showing more works by women, discovering powerful women shifting the attention and canny investors who are realising maybe it is just the right time to buy. Featured in the programme are: Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern; Prof of Finance, Renee Adams; from Sotheby’s Helena Newman and Marina Ruiz Colomer; philanthropist Valeria Napoleone, Bellatrix Hubert from David Zwirner gallery; author Helen Gorrill, art curator Naomi Polonsky, and the London Art Fair. Producer: Sarah Bowen

Rima Ahmed takes the bus into Leeds and tries to find out why it is “the biggest city in Western Europe without a mass transit system”.

Leeds was a transport pioneer - it introduced the first electric trams and trolleybuses in the country. In the 1970s and 80s, local councillors proudly declared Leeds “the motorway city” hailing the building of a massive urban motorway right through the city centre. In the 1990s, Sheffield was already building its supertram network and Leeds was also asking government to fund its own version. Despite funding being approved in 2001, £70 million had been wasted by the time Leeds’s supertram project was pulled by Transport Secretary Alastair Darling in 2005. A “trolleybus” scheme mooted in 2012 was also scrapped.

Now, the citizens of Leeds have been told that, if they are lucky, they may get a new mass transit system by 2040. Work may begin sometime by the end of the decade. In the meantime, the commuters of Leeds continue to live life in the bus lane.

Presenter: Rima Ahmed

In homes across the UK, partition is not history but a live issue for its young descendants. Over the course of a year, Kavita Puri follows three people as they piece together parts of their complex family history and try to understand the legacy of partition and what it means to them today. She connects with a young man who goes to the Pakistani village where his Hindu grandfather was saved by Muslims; a woman who has always thought of herself as British Pakistani but a DNA test reveals she also has roots in India; a woman with Pakistani heritage and a man with Indian heritage plan their wedding and realise that their families actually originate from within an hour of each other in the Punjab. Five years after the award-winning series Partition Voices, Kavita Puri explores the 75th anniversary of the division of the Indian subcontinent through three stories from the third generation in Britain.

Can video games change lives? And, if so, how? 50 years after the arrival of Pong, gamer and writer Keza MacDonald considers what gaming has done for us. Using the rich BBC Archives, she explores how video games grew from a niche pursuit to a cultural phenomenon which stokes the imagination of, and offers agency to, those who fall for its charms. Games now influence who we are, what we think and how we act. Keza speaks to collectors, competitive gamers, psychologists, games designers and, mostly importantly, gamers young and old to find out what impact games have had on us. We hear about the deep relationships that millions cherish with Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong, and illustrate the entanglement of life and gaming that is increasingly impossible to sever.

Presenter: Keza MacDonald