TV Tonight: Gaia: A Death on Dancing Ledge
icymi: Stuck for what to watch on TV Tonight? Gaia: A Death on Dancing Ledge is on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer at 9pm.
In episode two, Zara McDermott digs deeper into the dark online world that Gaia unwittingly stepped into three years before her death. Zara discovers how in 2014, when Gaia was 16, she was approached by a man – five years older than her - online who had a reputation for manipulating girls. Despite multiple warnings from those closest to her, Gaia wanted to help him and they became close.
As Zara explores further she finds that the man had been working with a group of webcammers who saw themselves as entrepreneurs in the world of streaming sex online for paying customers. These young men were filmed in 2015 for a BBC documentary presented by Mobeen Azhar, looking at this forerunner to Only Fans. It was a light-hearted film at the time but as Mobeen says, looking back at the footage it hid a murky underbelly.
Zara hears that one night, after the man who contacted Gaia online invited her to his house, her twin sister, Maya and Mum, Kim, receive a distressing phone call in the middle of the night to pick Gaia up. Maya says she instinctively knew that something wasn’t right, but says Gaia was too terrified to say anything for fear of repercussion.
Gaia goes in on herself and Zara hears her family describe her personality as changing overnight, she stops going to college, becomes extremely paranoid and starts suffering from panic attacks. It all comes to a head during a trip to A&E where, in frantically scribbled notes, Gaia reveals her account of what really happened that night.
A year later, Gaia reported that he had raped her. This episode examines his modus operandi and his ability to find and groom vulnerable young women.
Watch the three part series on BBC iPlayer.
