Sunday 7th
BBC2 - Wonders of the Solar System - new 5 part series - "Planet Earth is a stunning planet, with spell-binding natural wonders and the only life known in the Solar System. But it doesn't exist in magnificent isolation. The Space Age has brought new worlds of wonder into view. Dramatic images sent back by a fleet of probes, orbiters and landers have proved these worlds to be more spectacular than we ever imagined.
Physicist Professor Brian Cox ventures to some of the most extreme locations on Earth – including the tallest mountain, the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the world’s driest desert - to paint a dazzling picture of a Solar System we are only now beginning to understand."
Monday 8th
Channel 4 - Dispatches: Cameron Uncovered - "Award-winning columnist and writer Andrew Rawnsley has caused a furore while lifting the lid on Gordon Brown's premiership. Now Rawnsley presents an inside portrait of David Cameron and the government that might be.
According to opinion polls, after 13 years in the political wilderness, the Conservatives under David Cameron's leadership seem likely to form the next government. He has been working hard to change his party's image from 'the nasty party' and to demonstrate economic competence.
Yet many voters still don't feel they know his new Tories. How does Cameron operate? Do his closest colleagues work as a party within a party, creating disgruntled outsiders? How much harsher will their cuts in public services be than Labour's? Will they really lead the country out of recession faster than Gordon Brown? Can the so-called 'toffs' identify with the concerns of the vast majority of the population?
Rawnsley interviews the man who could be Prime Minister, and his colleagues George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove, the men who hope to run our economy, foreign affairs and education system. He gets an opponent's perspective from Lord Mandelson.
The programme reveals how these ministerial hopefuls plan to put their policies into action the day after the election. They've promised a budget within 50 days. What can we expect to happen to taxes, wages, public services and unemployment? Have they really done the homework that would get them off to a running start?
The country seems to want change. But has David Cameron, whose only experience outside politics has been in public relations, done no more than just tinker with the presentation of old Tory attitudes and added some more diverse candidates to the old mix?"
BBC4 - Women - new 3 part series - "Documentary series about feminism and its impact on women's lives from acclaimed filmmaker Vanessa Engle."
Tuesday 9th
BBC1 - Jobless - "As the unemployment statistics start to climb once more, multi BAFTA winning film-maker Brian Woods goes behind the numbers to the people they represent, and presents his take on the recession.
Filmed throughout 2009, and seen in part through the eyes of the children, Jobless tells the interwoven stories of several families across the length and breadth of Britain, as both husband and wife cope with losing their jobs, in most cases for the first time in their lives.
Andy and Jackie both worked for a computer printer company in Bracknell. Andy is confident he will soon find something, but as the months pass, the strain starts to show on both adults and children, including their 8-year-old daughter Hannah.
In the North East of England, 9-year-old Leah sums up the world as she see it; "I don't really understand why there isn't that much money anymore, I only really understand that people are all losing their jobs. Is that the recession?" As the pressures of unemployment take their toll on her parents's relationship, and her dad's temper, Leah observes "If I'm naughty then he gets more angry with me that he usually would. But he's trying to keep himself calm, and I think he's doing well. I just hope he gets a job."
And in Enfield, Samantha, also nine, is missing her dad. Both her parents lost their jobs of 20+ years when the car parts company they worked for, originally part of Ford, filed for bankruptcy. But rather than meekly walking away, Samantha's dad, along with several hundred others, occupied the plant, demanding that Ford honour their original severance terms.
This gently-observed documentary takes us inside the experience of losing the thing most of us use to define ourselves."
BBC2 - Horizon - Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong? - "There's something very odd going on in space - something that shouldn't be possible. It is as though vast swathes of the universe are being hoovered up by a vast and unseen celestial vacuum cleaner.
Sasha Kaslinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon, is understandably nervous: 'It left us quite unsettled and jittery' he says, 'because this is not something we planned to find'. The accidental discovery of what is ominously being called 'dark flow' not only has implications for the destinies of large numbers of galaxies - it also means that large numbers of scientists might have to find a new way of understanding the universe.
Dark flow is the latest in a long line of phenomena that have threatened to rewrite the textbooks. Does it herald a new era of understanding, or does it simply mean that everything we know about the universe is wrong?"
Thursday 11th
Channel 4 - Too Poor For Posh School? - "London's elite Harrow School is one of the world's most famous private schools. Renowned for producing the finest statesmen, including Churchill and Nehru; writers like Richard Curtis and Anthony Trollope; and numerous captains of industry, Harrow is one of the last remaining all-boys boarding schools in Britain and one steeped in history. Each year, two boys from far less wealthy families are offered the chance of the Peter Beckwith Scholarship. The means-tested scholarship can pay up to full fees for a boy's entire career at Harrow, and two years at a prep school before they join Harrow at 13, worth close to £200,000. Last autumn Harrow granted Cutting Edge access to film the annual selection contest which happens on a single day in November. This documentary follows the journey of three of the 11 shortlisted boys as they undergo a relentless day of tests and interviews."
Friday 12th
Channel 4 - White Boy, Black Nanny - "When Mark Rossiter's family left South Africa in 1986, the country was segregated along racial lines in every conceivable way. Black people were denied basic human rights and classified as second-class citizens.
At the same time however, roughly a million African women worked for white people and often became surrogate members of their families. Some of the women were not trusted with the family valuables yet paradoxically put in charge of caring for babies, and white children came to form intimate emotional attachments to women who were considered inferior by society.
Mark's family were liberal white South Africans, but even they benefitted from apartheid through lives of privilege and convenience. His nanny Susan was significant and anonymous at the same time; now Mark returns to South Africa, determined to find the woman who brought him up for 10 years.
He wants to find out what has happened to her in the new South Africa, and to reconcile his own childhood memories of growing up under apartheid.
Armed with just a 25-year-old photograph and Susan's first name, Mark embarks on a journey that takes him from the comfort of the predominantly white suburbs to the poverty-ridden townships to discover what life was like for black women working as servants in white homes."
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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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