Monday 11th
BBC 2 - The British Family - 1/4 'Marriage' - "Kirsty Young begins a history of how British families have changed since the Second World War by looking at marriage.
Using vibrant archive footage and bittersweet interviews, she examines how, from the 1940s to the late 1960s, marriage was transformed from a sometimes stifling institution into a more equal relationship. She discovers that although many marriages are now happier, the growing tide of divorce continues unstemmed."
Tuesday 12th
BBC 2 - Simon Schama on Obama's America - 2-parts - "Simon Schama considers potential strategies for Obama's inherited conflict in Afghanistan and asks whether President Obama will act decisively to rein in Wall Street."
BBC 4 - The Diary of Anne Frank - 5 part dramatisation - "The rights to The Diary Of Anne Frank rarely become available. The BBC and Darlow Smithson Productions have worked closely with the Anne Frank-Fonds, the charitable foundation promoting social and cultural projects in the spirit of Anne Frank, to ensure complete authenticity for the drama."
BBC 4- Lost Kingdoms of Africa - 4 part series (Missed part 1) - "Four-part series in which British art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford explores the pre-colonial history of some of Africa's most important kingdoms.The African continent is home to nearly a billion people. It has an incredible diversity of communities and cultures, yet we know less of its history than almost anywhere else on earth.But that is beginning to change. In the last few decades researchers and archaeologists have begun to uncover a range of histories as impressive and extraordinary as anywhere else in the world.The series reveals that Africa's stories are preserved for us in its treasures, statues and ancient buildings - in the culture, art and legends of the people.The first episode looks at Nubia, in what is now northern Sudan, a kingdom that dominated a vast area of the eastern Sahara for thousands of years. Its people were described as barbarians and mercenaries, and yet Nubia has left us with some of the most spectacular monuments in the world.Casely-Hayford traces the origins of this fascinating kingdom back to 10,000 BC. He explores how it developed and what happened to it and its people, discovering that its kings once ruled Ancient Egypt and that it was defeated not by its rivals but by its environment."
Wednesday 13th
BBC 2 - Horizon - Why Do Viruses Kill? - "Just months ago, the world stood in fear of an emerging new disease that threatened to kill millions. A new flu variant H1N1 had arrived. In the UK alone, 65,000 deaths were predicted. Yet to date, these dire warnings have not materialised.
If this latest pandemic has taught anything, it is just how little is understood about the invisible world of viruses. But that has not stopped scientists trying.
Horizon follows the leading researchers from across the world, who are attempting to unravel the many secrets of viruses to understand when and why they kill."
Thursday 14th
BBC 2 - Jimmy's Global Harvest 2/4 - "Jimmy Doherty sets out to discover if the world's farmers will be able to feed us in the future.
Demand for food is expected to double within the next 40 years. Yet we can only grow food on four per cent of the earth's surface, the climate is changing and resources like water and fuel are under threat. Jimmy meets the men and women who claim to have new techniques and new technologies that will help meet these challenges."
Channel 4 - Kevin McCloud: Slumming It - 2-parts - "As part of Channel 4's Indian Winter season, Kevin McCloud discovers a world of curious juxtapositions in one of the most extreme urban environments on earth: Dharavi, Mumbai.
Having heard bigwig architects, planners and even Prince Charles claiming that Dharavi has the answers to some of the biggest problems facing our Western cities, Kevin embarks on a journey to lift the lid on this place himself. With a million people crammed into one square mile, Dharavi is one of the most densely populated places on earth. It is also one of Asia's biggest slums.
As a way of experiencing the good and bad of Dharavi first hand, Kevin decides to live, work, sleep, eat and wash there, and he's terrified at the prospect of doing so. In the first programme, as Kevin enters Dharavi he finds open sewers, rats and hazardous chemicals everywhere. However, he also discovers that it is a highly organised place with thousands of tiny industries.
To understand Dharavi, Kevin fully immerses himself in the environment, living and working with the locals, sampling life in the pottery area and discovering the extraordinary sense of spirit and community despite the hardships. He explores this industrious square mile, meeting bakers, cobblers and suitcase manufacturers, all thriving as part of the 15,000 one-room industries contained in this slum. But, despite the area's apparent successes, Kevin finds Dharavi is to be redeveloped and razed to the ground."
ITV 1 - Real Crime with Mark Austin: Tobin - Portrait of a Serial Killer - "As Peter Tobin faces sentencing for the murder of Dinah McNicol, Mark Austin speaks to criminologists, psychologists and those who have come face-to-face with the man to deduce whether Tobin is Britain's worst serial killer. The programme examines Tobin's past to see what drove the man to become a monster, talking to his two ex-wives and the women he befriended in the months before he killed Angelika Kluk. It also explores the first crime he was convicted of - the double rape of two young girls in 1993."
Friday 15th
BBC 4 - The Secret of Life of Chaos - "Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.
It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?
In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?
It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.
And the best thing is that one doesn't need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you'll never be able to look at the world in the same way again."
BBC 2- Empire of the Seas: How The Navy Forged the Modern World - new 4 parts - " Historian Dan Snow charts the defining role the Royal Navy played in Britain's struggle for modernity - a grand tale of the twists and turns which thrust the people of the British Isles into an indelible relationship with the sea and ships.
Heart of Oak opens with a dramatic retelling of 16th and 17th-century history. Victory over the Armada proved a turning point in the nation's story as tiny, impoverished England was transformed into a seafaring nation, one whose future wealth and power lay on the oceans. The ruthless exploits of Elizabethan seafaring heroes like Francis Drake created a potent new sense of national identity that combined patriotism and Protestantism with private profiteering.
At sea and on land, Snow shows how Navy became an indispensable tool of state, weaving the stories of characters like Drake, God's Republican Warrior at sea Robert Blake, and Samuel Pepys, administrator par excellence, who laid the foundations for Britain's modern civil service.
With access to the modern Navy and reconstructed ships of the time, Snow recounts the Navy's metamorphosis from a rabble of West Country freebooters to the most complex industrial enterprise on earth."
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* This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
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