Boorman was conscripted for compulsory military service during the Korean War when he became a clerical instructor, and once faced court-martial for "seducing a soldier from the course of his duty" by criticizing the war to his trainees; this was abandoned when Boorman showed "The Times" was the source of all his comments. After army service he worked as a drycleaner and journalist in the late 1950s. He ran the newsrooms at Southern Television in Southampton and Dover before moving into TV documentary filmmaking, eventually becoming the head of the BBC's Bristol-based Documentary Unit in 1962.