A staged residential care facility is at the centre of a Channel 4 documentary investigating whether members of the British public can recognise dangerous discrimination when it is presented as a solution to a modern social issue.

Titled The Experiment, the programme places unsuspecting visitors inside the fictional SegriLife House, where policies rooted in Nazi-era treatment of disabled people are presented as part of a supposedly progressive supported-living model. Disabled and neurodivergent actors portray residents, while visitors’ responses to the facility’s practices are recorded without revealing the experiment’s true purpose.

Channel 4 said the production draws on propaganda historically used by the Nazi regime to defend the segregation, forced sterilisation and mass killing of people with disabilities. The documentary seeks to establish whether similar arguments could gain acceptance today when repackaged in contemporary language.

The programme also examines Aktion T4, the Nazi operation through which people with disabilities were systematically murdered. Its presenters, actor Mat Fraser and disability rights campaigner Sophie Morgan, travel to Hartheim Castle and Museum in Austria, a former killing centre, to document the history of the victims.

Fraser and Morgan said they wanted to investigate how easily the public might be influenced into viewing disabled people as less deserving of inclusion. They warned that disability rights face challenges in Britain and internationally, arguing that understanding the past is important to preventing similar abuses.

The documentary was developed with guidance from Access All Areas and Graeae Theatre Company, organisations working with disabled and neurodivergent performers.

According to The Independent, the programme is scheduled to air on Channel 4 at 10pm on Wednesday, October 21.