Presented by journalist Ding Yu the programme featured interviews with people convicted in cases of violent murder who were offered a chance to tell their story while under sentence of death.
At the beginning of each week Ding Yu and her colleagues studied court records to find out who had been sentenced to death, and then selected potential interviewees.
[1] During the time the series was on air Ding Yu interviewed 226 inmates,[2] including a homosexual man convicted of the murder of his mother, a young man and his girlfriend who killed the girl's grandparents for financial gain, a woman convicted of the murder of her husband, and an 18-year-old who was one of the youngest people to be sentenced to death.
[1] Most were subsequently executed, but some had their death sentences reprieved;[2] among them the woman convicted of killing her husband who successfully argued she had been a victim of domestic abuse.
[1][4] The film, Interviews Before Execution: A Chinese Talk Show, produced in association with LIC China, was aired on BBC Two in the United Kingdom on 12 March 2012.