When Johan Booysen hears that the new Provincial Police Chief takes backhanders from a Durban businessman, he decides to give her the benefit of the doubt. But the evidence becomes impossible to ignore and he soon gets dragged down the corridors of power and politics into a web of intrigue, deceit and betrayal that, at times, he has trouble making sense of.

Only when he is arrested, handcuffed and tossed into a cell does Booysen realise just how ruthless those opposed to him are – an opposition he comes to call the ‘cabal’ – and whom he believes have more blood on their hands than the so-called Cato Manor Death Squad with which he is closely associated.

Blood On Their Hands traces Johan Booysen’s life and career – from patrolling the streets of Amanzimtoti in the 1970s to his rise in 2010 to major general and head of KZN’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation unit, the Hawks. But his tenure is short-lived. When Booysen decides to take on those so determined to be rid of him, each legal battle he wins is met by hostility and further efforts to shut him out of the of the criminal justice system. But capitulating is not in his DNA…

In 1990 two South African mothers were faced with an impossible choice, one that no mother should ever have to make. Should they surrender the child they had lovingly raised in order to get back the baby they had given birth to?

Megs Clinton-Parker and Sandy Dawkins chose nurture over nature, simply unable to give up their two-year-old sons who were switched at birth at an East Rand hospital. Instead they decided to try to make their strange relationship work, although they lived in different cities, 500km apart. And they decided to sue the South African state, whose negligence had altered the fates of two families forever. Robin Dawkins and Gavin Clinton-Parker grew up living each other’s lives, brothers-but-not-brothers, acutely aware that their mothers’ hearts were torn.

Unable to escape the consequences of the swap, Robin decided at the age of 15 that it was time to claim what was rightfully his, adding a further twist to this bitter saga.

Carte Blanche burst onto the scene in 1988 as a genre never before seen on South African television: a trail-blazer, a blend of sociological awareness, sophistication and audacity. When pay channel M-Net came up with this different and daring weekly eye-opener that pushed the envelope, it brought promise of freedom and creativity and ended a period in our history in which television news and current affairs were limited to the state broadcaster.

Twenty-five years on, the familiar Carte Blanche melody has become an institution, announcing the end of the weekend and the start of an hour that resists the mundane and stimulates debate. What's become a Sunday night ritual began in a make-shift studio with a small team of firebrands, led by an arrogant, fearless talent, a showman with scant respect for the conventions of the time: Bill Faure was the most dynamic director of his day, a visionary who shared his passionate love of television with the world. He set the stage for what has become South Africa's longest running investigative current affairs show and the most valuable real estate in broadcasting. Faure passed the baton on to an extraordinary generation of journalists that created a vault of diverse memories, brought into homes across the country and into Africa, stories of delight and daring, cheek and chutzpah, heartbreak and heroism, of the weird and whacky. It's said that his spirit still guides Carte Blanche into shaking complacency and bringing to the screen a social and ecological conscience, be it the cruelty meted out to the Tuli elephants, the selfless courage of Sally Trench, or blast off with Mark Shuttleworth.

It's enabled us all to chase car thieves across our borders, catch out rogue mechanics and find out what security guards and plumbers do and don't do in our homes. It's brought to our screens a host of unforgettable characters from the transsexuals of Beaufort West to the shady directors of Aurora.

Carte Blanche: 25 years dips into an era of quality journalism through the eyes of the producers and presenters who have so effectively measured the national mood and recognized defining moments. It's a show that has become part of our landscape and promises to survive another quarter of a century.