Humax TV Tonight: Boris Becker – The Rise and Fall

Boris Becker – The Rise and Fall starts tonight at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

This two-part series reveals the untold, inside story of how one of the world’s greatest sporting stars ended up in Wandsworth Jail.

Boris Becker took the tennis world by storm when he won Wimbledon aged just 17. He became as famous as a rock star with luxury homes across the globe and making headline news. Then the hero crashed and burned, sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for hiding £2.6 m worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.

This series shows Boris Becker as never seen before, from those who know him best. His coaches, his childhood friends and his women. Produced by Finestripe Productions, the two-part series features exclusive access to key insiders from his inner circle, including his estranged wife Sharlely Becker, former fiancee Alessandra Meyer-Wölden, tennis champions Pat Cash, Tim Mayotte and Kevin Curren Boris’s first coach Gunther Bosch, and Rolf Hauschild, German journalist who covered Boris from the start of his fame for Bild magazine.

These revealing interviews alongside never-before-seen footage, tell the story of how the three-time Wimbledon champion lost it all, in a highly publicised bankruptcy trial.

Featuring rare and previously unseen archive and brand new interviews with those closest to him, the series builds a character study of the German tennis prodigy from his earliest days as Wimbledon’s youngest ever champion in 1985 through to the present day.  The story will be set against the background of a golden era for tennis – a time of hedonism, big bucks and even bigger characters.  It was a perfect storm of media exposure and money, into which walked the 17-year-old Becker from a small town in Germany.

Boris Becker: The Rise & Fall is a story of greed, egotism, the destructive power of fame and Becker’s contentious relationships with the women in his life.