Making friends with drug dealers, gangsters and poachers for his new BBC documentary series sounds like a risky strategy for Ashley Cain. But the former Coventry City footballer and TV reality star told the RTS Midlands premiere of Into the Danger Zone: “I don’t support criminality but I do support humanity.”

Cain said he had travelled to some of the most hostile places in the world to meet violent offenders in a bid to understand, with no judgement, how the young men found themselves in these deadly situations.

He earned people’s trust to infiltrate the closed worlds of favelas in Brazil, jails in the Philippines and cartels in Colombia, and befriend rhino horn poachers in South Africa and mercenaries in Marseilles. He has stayed in touch with some, even getting a Happy New Year text from Pablo Escobar’s son.

Cain told the RTS: “I wanted to listen to these men with an open mind, to be a voice for people who feel like they’re not heard and excluded from society. I connected with them on a human level. A lot of them do incredibly bad things, but why? They might not be bad people. Where there are no opportunities and poverty, they do what they need to in order to survive.

“I could easily have turned to a life of crime where I grew up. I had to ask myself: if my kids were hungry, would I do what they do to put food in my sons’ mouths? Maybe.”

Cain’s two young sons  – Aliyas, 15 months, and five-month-old Atlas – were in the audience at the event. He missed Atlas’s arrival as he was born early while he was filming Into the Danger Zone. His daughter, Azaylia, died from leukaemia in 2021 aged eight months, which is why he felt especially connected to a grieving mother he met in Rio de Janeiro.

“She, like me, had lost a child. Her son was murdered by the militia and his body was burned and returned to her as a bag of bones. It cut deep.” In the first episode of the BBC Three six-parter, Cain has tears in his eyes as he hugs her, saying: “My heart really hurts for you.”

Also at the premiere to support Cain were some of his well-known friends, including Calum Best (son of George), rugby union player Harry Thacker and SAS: Who Dares Wins chief instructor Billy Billingham (Cain reached the final of the Channel 4 celebrity series in 2022).

Cain makes a striking impression with luxuriant beard and tattoos on bulging muscles, which he has put to use raising money in memory of Azaylia in extraordinary physical challenges, including an Ultraman 900-mile run, 925-mile cycle and 950-mile kayak sea crossing.

But Into the Danger Zone has been another challenge altogether, not least because it was his first attempt at making a documentary with his production company, House of Panthera, in association with True North.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said. “I just had to be myself and have trust in the great people around me. We were in the trenches, with only 10 days to make each episode, and I was scared about what was going to happen. But we got it done despite the odds.”

BBC commissioning editor Nasfim Haque introduced the first episode at the RTS Midlands event and called it a “modern, stylish and gripping series”, adding: “Ashley is what BBC Three is about – a new talent giving us a new perspective.”

The premiere of Into the Danger Zone was held at the Mockingbird Cinema in Birmingham on 24 March. It was hosted by radio presenter Rakeem Omar and produced by Jayne Rae.