Masked by a heat haze, Los Angeles is the genesis of approximately 92% of the American cultural references sent down the wire, yet the city is still too American for British people to fully comprehend. How welcome, then, that Louis Theroux takes his cameras to the city for his new documentary series Louis Theroux's LA Stories (Sunday, 9pm, BBC2).  In the first instalment, City Of Dogs, Louis looks at a scattering of LA's 8 million canines (that's roughly two for every human), focusing on the neglected and rejected ones at the peripheries and those who care for them. One of those carers is Leslie. I imagine Leslie as a sweet girl, day-dreaming about one day working with animals. Fast-forward a couple of grim decades held together by Xanax and gritted teeth, and Leslie is a screw on doggy death row, a supervisor at a full-to-bursting kennel in South LA. The pound packs in so many unwanted dogs that her job requires her to do in thousands of them each year. She kills 'em but they keep coming, like a burst dog pipe shooting out a jet of mangy mutts.  Trying to stem that flow is Dogman, a pitbull enthusiast who's given up his life to round up, rehabilitate and re-home feral dogs. He has the eyes of a bloodhound who's tired of your shit and the impassive manner of one of Leslie's euthanised hounds, even when he's lamenting broken puppy hearts. In Compton, Dogman introduces Louis to ex-hood Malcolm, who runs a street training school that turns dogs into growling slaughter machines. Think of a canine terminator with a giant clockwork jaw of steel and razor wire: that's Malcolm's dog. If you get too close to Malcolm, the dog will bite you. If you think about getting too close to Malcolm, the dog will bite you. Malcolm insists his dogs can read your mind and duly tear out whichever part of your body you value most.  It might raise an eyebrow, but at least Malcolm's psychic biting force have found a role in life. Across town, we're introduced to pitbull cross Caspar, who was adopted by fashion designer Nancy and artist Max just five months ago. It's hard to tell through the muzzle he wears and the cage he's confined to, but Caspar has the looks of a vintage mohair jumper and the charm of a pneumatic drill hammering through your nan's heirloom china. His owners – a dribble of bohemian frizz and batik dungarees – have bitten off more than they can chew and are already looking for permission to put him down. Seriously, the couple couldn't parody themselves harder if they brought in a zen trainer to sort Caspar out. Which, of course, they do. Twat in a hat Matt doesn't tell us what's zen about his training, or even what his methods entail, offering only: "As a pack leader I don't pretend, defend or explain, because you're genetically wired to follow me." For a pack leader, by the way, he's remarkably shit at getting the little prick to stop barking. When Louis returns later in the programme, Caspar has chomped up Nancy's leg and been despatched to doggy Broadmoor in the sky.  Apart from the bit where Nancy becomes a string of patchouli-flavoured sausages, City Of Dogs is unrelentingly sad. Dogs are barking, wagging canaries, facsimiles of whatever environment they were raised in. It's easy to shed tears over fwuffy pooches, but as short-sighted as a one-eyed poodle. It's the people who have the problems, and not knowing how to love something so lovable is towards the back of their bumper book of gnawing issues.  Rows of skinny, yelping mutts destined for the fertiliser factory is the result of society's own very human problems. But what TV shows have known for a long time is that dusty crackheads aren't half as cute as even the mangiest dog. Even so, there's not much absurdity for Louis to play against here. I suppose it's appropriate, but I did find myself wishing he'd snap out of his concerned six-foot baguette shtick and give us some of the childish baiting he's known for, just for a break in the misery of it all.
From weaponised pitbulls to yelpy mutts en route to the fertiliser factory, the first LA Stories is unrelentingly sad