A vacuum cleaner for a friend: Dateline reopens its 2017 robot film on Japan
Hiroshi Ishiguro and his look-alike robot return from the SBS archive, alongside a short on what became of USAID's toilets in Liberia.
SBS Dateline
Story of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
Are Robots A Cure for Japan's Loneliness Epidemic? | SBS Dateline Archive (2017)
On an ordinary day, SBS Dateline's back catalog brings in somewhere around 47,000 views, and this week ran just under that, adding a little over 320,000 in seven days while the subscriber count held at 791,000.
Two of the three new uploads went back to 2017. "Are Robots A Cure for Japan's Loneliness Epidemic?" is a full archive episode, and its chapter list reads like a short story collection: a man whose friend is a vacuum cleaner, a companion robot for empty nesters, someone dating a robot, a man who hates them, a robot suit for people with disabilities and a robot pet for the elderly. At its center is Hiroshi Ishiguro, the Osaka University roboticist famous for the Geminoid, an android built as his own double. A short clip followed two days later, pulling out the moment Dateline asked him why he made a clone of himself, with the title quoting him: he wants to look like it.
The third upload looked forward instead. Reporter Rhiona-Jade Armont went to Liberia to see what happened to a sanitation project paid for by USAID, the agency the Trump administration dismantled in 2025, after critics had held up "toilets in Africa" as a waste of money. The short points to her full film, Liberia: Dumped By America.
The archive episode is the week's quickest new video by a distance, but the real weight still sits with older reporting. A 34-day-old film on Sweden's Nordic Model, where selling sex is legal and buying it is not, has passed half a million views, and Prue Lewarne's trip into Sinaloa cartel territory, posted 27 days ago, is not far behind on daily pace.
Among documentary and journalism channels of a similar size, Dateline had one of the calmer weeks, close to the fifth estate, while Channel 4 Documentaries gathered by far the most views in the group.
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The videos drawing views on SBS Dateline right now
What happened to the US-funded 'toilets in Africa'? #Liberia #USAID #…3,625 views · 2026-09-30
'I want to look like my clone robot' #Japan #humanoidrobot | SBS Date…1,896 views · 2026-10-01
The Nordic Model: Legal To Sell Sex But Not Buy It | SBS Dateline503,610 views
Inside the Mexican State That Became a Drug Cartel War Zone | SBS Dat…170,396 views
- Channel
- SBS Dateline
- Subscribers
- 791,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 323,118
- Videos published this week
- 3
- Video published
- September 29, 2026
- Video views so far
- 11,884
- Views on its first day
- 4,475
The numbers
Here is how SBS Dateline's week looks in figures.
💡 Test your knowledge
Paro, the famous Japanese therapy robot used in elder care, is modeled on which animal?
Paro, developed by Japan's AIST, is a soft robotic baby harp seal designed to comfort elderly and dementia patients.