Off-air recordings for week 29 May-4 June 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Sunday 30th

BBC - The Big Personality Test: A Child of Our Time Special - 2 parts "Professor Robert Winston presents a documentary series following the lives of 25 British children until the age of 20. For this edition, all the kids have been filmed continuously for 48 hours, putting their day-to-day lives under the microscope. Every laugh, every tear and every movement has been recorded, counted and analysed to build up a real picture of a day in the life of the average British child."

Channel 4 - Genius of Britain - 5 part series (on every day this week) - "Britain may only be a small island, but its great scientists and inventors have literally created the modern world: from the invention of the steam engine, computers and the world-wide web to the discovery of the theory of evolution and the atom.
In this five-part series some of Britain's leading scientific figures - Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, James Dyson, David Attenborough, Robert Winston, Paul Nurse, Jim Al-Khalili, Kathy Sykes and Olivia Judson - tell the stories of the people behind these innovations.
From Isaac Newton to Frank Whittle, James Watt to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and Joseph Banks to Rosalind Franklin, these are the people who - through blood, sweat and tears - overcame all obstacles in the search for answers."

Monday 31st

BBC4 - Mud, Sweat and Tractors - 4 part series - "The documentary series looking at the history of 20th-century farming in Britain opens by focusing on milk.
In the early years of the century, 150,000 dairy farmers milked by hand and sold milk door to door. By the end of the century, the 15,000 that were left were breeding cows that increased yields by 400 per cent and milk was sold through supermarkets."

BBC4 - Farm to Pharma: The Rise and Rise of Food Science - "Documentary which explores the history of British food science, taking a fascinating voyage through over a century of petri-dishes, vitamins and E-numbers.
The connection between food manufacturers and the white coat brigade is nothing new. One hundred and fifty years before Heston Blumenthal, Birmingham chemist Alfred Bird was reinventing custard because his wife had an allergy to eggs.
By the 1930s, George Orwell was already complaining about the chemical by-products that the British people were eating, but when war gave scientists a chance to remake the British diet the improvement in the nation's health was extraordinary.
Charting the growing role that food science has played in our daily lives, we meet Tony Blake, the food scientist who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors, and we learn about biochemist Jack Drummond, the tragic mastermind of British food in the Second World War, who died alongside his family as in a mysterious murder.
We discover how vegetarian product Quorn was invented to prevent a global food crisis and how breakthroughs in flavour chemistry helped create the day-glo processed foods of the 1970s. We recall Margaret Thatcher's early career as a food scientist and find out why there was no such thing as a free lunch when it came to the promise of fat-free snacks."

Friday 4th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Bolivia's Child Miners - "Unreported World descends deep underground into Bolivia's silver mines to find boys as young as 13 working long hours in deadly conditions. The thick dust and poisonous gases in the mines mean the children face the near-certainty of crippling lung disease and a life expectancy of little more than 35 years.
The mines are centered around Potosi in the Bolivian Andes, the highest city in the world. Looming over it is a legendary mountain, the Cerro Rico. It has been mined for hundreds of years and is now being exploited by co-operatives of up to 10,000 miners.
Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Matt Haan meet 14-year-old Jose Luis, who works with 400 other miners at the San Jacinto mine, one of the largest on the mountain. He tells Rhodes that he's working in the mine because school starts in a few days and he needs money for a new uniform. Like most of the 200,000 people in Potosi, he comes from an indigenous Indian background. Although the indigenous people have recently won a decades-long struggle for political freedom in Bolivia they are still poorer than their white compatriots."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 22-28 May 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Saturday 22nd

BBC2 - Timewatch: Pyramid - The Last Secret - "For centuries archaeologists have been trying to work out how the ancient Egyptians raised huge stone blocks to the top of the Great Pyramid.
This documentary presents a radical theory by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin. He believes that an internal ramp was used, which is still inside the Pyramid waiting to be discovered. If he is right, it is the greatest discovery since Tutankhamun."

Channel 4 - Capitalism: A Love Story - "Michael Moore loves America, but America does not love Michael Moore. After the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 public opinion of the liberal filmmaker took a downturn. Republicans have good reason to hate him but the attitude of Democrats is baffling. They claim to dislike his oversimplification, his manipulation of emotions and sometimes facts, and his bombastic personality. Republicans have long used these methods to influence the public with great success - all Moore does is play them at their own highly effective game. There's been a lot of talk around health care reform about Democrats behaving too nicely, too politely. Jon Stewart recently argued on 'The Daily Show' that it's the rationality and fairness of the Democrats that will prevent them from making any real changes. While the Republicans are sending out hugely marketable statements and buzzwords, however misguided, the Democrats are bumbling around with the details. We love President Obama not for the small print of his plans, but for how he makes us feel. We need more "Yes we can" and less "Um, yes, well by 2011, we might". Moore has been a liberal in Republican's clothing for the last decade - he looks like a Republican and he sounds like a Republican. He takes radical ideas, mixes them up using the Republican recipe, and makes them easy to swallow."

Sunday 23rd

BBC2 - Money - "A BBC Drama Production two-part adaptation of Martin Amis' darkly comedic tale of excess, greed and flawed ambition set at the beginnings of Eighties capitalism.
Bold, irreverent and satirical, Money follows the story of John Self (Nick Frost), a successful British director of commercials who is thrust into the world of New York movie deals, shark agents and impossibly petulant actors in order to shoot his first film.
Navigating larger-than-life characters including uber-slick film producer Fielding Goodney (Kartheiser), wooden soap actress Caduta Massi (Jerry Hall), clean-living method actor Spunk Davis and ageing Hollywood hard-man Lorne Guyland (casting to be announced), Self lurches from one crisis to the next as he chases his dream – and the money.
Juggling his girlfriend Selina (Emma Pierson) with an old film-school crush and movie stars, Self relies on his wits and luck to survive an increasingly degenerate lifestyle – but a mysterious danger lurks that Self can't seem to shake, and it might just threaten the dream..."

Channel 4 - Dispatches: The Lost Girls of South Africa - "In South Africa a child is raped every three minutes and AIDS continues to spread with epidemic ferocity.
Dispatches follows four girls aged 11 to 13 as they struggle to come to terms with the crimes committed against them and fight the social stigma that comes with the abuse.
From the multi-BAFTA-winning True Vision team, this is an intimate and deeply moving portrayal of the tragic impact of child abuse in a post-apartheid South Africa still coming to terms with its difficult and violent past."

BBC4 - Mark Lawson Talks To Martin Amis - "Mark Lawson talks to notorious literary bad boy Martin Amis ahead of the BBC dramatisation of his book Money. In this revealing interview Amis speaks candidly about his relationship with his father Kingsley Amis, which survived the breakup of his parents' marriage and his father's disinterest in reading Martin's books. Amis also reveals how his sister Sally was a 'victim of the sexual revolution' whose consequent struggles in life influenced his latest book The Pregnant Widow."

Tuesday 25th

More4 - True Stories: A Bipolar Expedition - "Mark James' film, showing in the True Stories strand, follows Paul Downes, a successful businessman with bipolar disorder whose manic highs are followed by depressive lows.
Now he wants a wife - a soul mate and someone to care for him - and has hired a castle in Jamaica, inviting 12 Ukrainian women to join him, in the hope that one will marry him.
James follows Paul on his 2009 trip to Jamaica, and gives a rare insight into Paul's bipolar disorder, exploring its origins and the impact that the manias and depressions have had on his life.
However the most extraordinary aspect of the film is capturing Paul in the grip of a manic episode, as his interest in finding a wife dwindles and his attention turns to taking over the world."

Thursday 27th

ITV1 - How Safe Is Your Beach? : Tonight - "According to official figures, bathing at almost 200 of the UK's beaches carries a risk of infection from sewage-derived bacteria. The programme investigates the causes of this contamination and asks whether any of our beaches can be guaranteed to be free of pollution."

Friday 28th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Iraq's Next Battlefield - "As the US prepares to withdraw from Iraq, reporter Evan Williams and director Matt Haan travel to the most dangerous part of the country and find increasing religious, ethnic and political violence in this oil-rich region threatening to spill into bloody civil war once the troops leave.
The Unreported World team begins its journey in Mosul, a city of two million people that lies on the fault line between the Arab and Kurdish parts of Iraq and has been a centre of resistance to the Americans since the invasion in 2003. Their route is lined with flattened buildings that have not been rebuilt since the invasion. Seven years on, it remains the most dangerous city in Iraq, with at least 50 murders occurring every month.
In 2009 Iraqi forces took over responsibility for the security of the region, supposedly moving from a state of war to civil policing. But their main activity remains battling Sunni insurgents, who want the area to remain unstable as they battle what they see as the domination of Iraq by the Shia Muslim ruling majority.
One local commander tells Williams that most of the killings are political rather than criminal. He claims Al Qaeda are trying to cause division between Kurds, Sunnis and Shia and are also targeting some of Mosul's oldest ethnic minorities - such as the Christians, Shabaks and Yezidis - to cause fear and chaos."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 15-21 May 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Monday 17th May

BBC4 - Mental: A History of the Madhouse - "Documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years."

Tuesday 18th

More 4 - True Stories: Mugabe and the White African - "Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey's film in the True Stories strand tells of how one white farmer took on the Zimbabwe government and took Robert Mugabe himself to court.
Mike Campbell ran a mango farm in Zimbabwe which was reallocated to a poor black family (in reality, the son of one of Mugabe's former ministers) under Mugabe's Land Reform Programme. But Campbell and his son-in-law Ben Freeth took their case to a tribunal of the Southern African Development Community, an international court in Namibia, arguing the eviction was based on racial discrimination, which is illegal in Zimbabwe.
The case dragged on for over a year, during which Campbell and his family were intimidated by armed gangs, kidnapped and tortured to within an inch of their lives. This film is an intimate account of one family's bravery in the face of state brutality and whose fight for justice has implications for ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to suffer at the hands of Mugabe and his regime."

Friday 21st

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Inside Burma's Secret State - "Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Simon Phillips spend two weeks trekking through forests to reveal the devastation the Burmese army is inflicting as it intensifies its war against the Karen people.
The team are smuggled across the Salaween river from Thailand in a small boat, covered by tarpaulin. On the other side, the few roads in Karen State are controlled by the Burmese military, so the only safe route is over mountains and through dense jungle.
The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) scouts acting as the team's guides have been part of an army that has been fighting the Burmese for 60 years. The Karen are one of Burma's hill tribes who see themselves as culturally distinct from the Burmese, with their own language, and unlike the Buddhist Burmese, they are predominantly Christian. The Burmese army has stepped up its offensive against the Karen people, who are confined to mountainous jungle and encircled.
One Karen guide, Saw-Sun, claims that the Burmese army forces Karen villagers to do their most dangerous jobs, such as walking through minefields to clear a path, and that in the latest round of fighting the army burnt Karen villages to the ground.
After four days' trekking, they find signs that they are near the scene of these attacks; hundreds of people - most of them women and children - are sleeping rough in the jungle. A village elder claims the army has driven nearly 3,000 people in the area from their homes, and they are now living in temporary camps.
One woman tells Rhodes that she and her four young children have been in the camp for two months since their village was attacked. Mu-Si-Kpoh says she only had two hours to pack and get out of her house before the Burmese soldiers arrived."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 6-14 May 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Thursday 6th

BBC2 - History Cold Case - 4-part series - "History series which sees skeletons of everyday people from across the ages analysed in staggering detail, opening new windows on the history of our forebears by literally revealing the person behind the skeleton.The fascinating work of world-renowned Professor Sue Black OBE and her team at the Centre for Human Anatomy and Identification at the University of Dundee comes under the spotlight as the team works on answering three big questions from the skeleton. Who were they? Why did they die? What does their life story tell us that we didn't know before?"

Sunday 9th

ITV 1 - The Seasons with Alan Titchmarsh - "Alan Titchmarsh goes back to his roots to find out how our changing seasons affect everything around us. The series reveals the profound and far-reaching impact that each season has on our wildlife and landscape, and how they shape the way we all live. In the first programme Alan leads us through the start of the natural year, spring, a time of hope and optimism is under every foot and around every corner new life is just waiting to begin. Alan’s natural enthusiasm for the subject, alongside stunning photography, brings the subject of spring to life, exploring and vividly displaying its transformative effect as it sweeps from south to north between March and May, affecting everything from scallop fishing in Dorset to stags shedding their antlers in the Scottish Highlands. The programme looks at why spring arrives when it does in Britain and why weather is so unpredictable at this time of year. Its broad scope encompasses how spring heralds a time of reawakening, highlighting the rich profusion of wildlife and plants emerging after the long winter days across our skies, hills, rivers, forests and coastline. Alan says: “Spring isn’t just about what you can see. It’s a feeling in the pit of your stomach and you can smell it too. Not that acrid sour smell of autumn, but a sweetness on the breeze that’s all its own.” "

Channel 4 - Time Team - "In Sutton Courtenay Tony Robinson and the Team investigate a set of buildings once occupied by Anglo Saxon royalty.
It's the rarest of archaeological sites and uncovers the biggest Saxon building ever discovered in Britain. Aerial photography of an apparently featureless Oxfordshire field revealed crop marks that suggested to archaeologists it was once the site of an impressive collection of 1,400-year-old buildings; but Time Team's digging expertise was needed to verify this.
The trenches are big and the archaeology complicated but slowly the Team begin to build up a picture of life here over 1,000 years ago, with the help of heroic Saxon poetry.
As well as stunning finds and the perplexing possibility that they have uncovered an Anglo Saxon totem pole, the archaeologists also discover a culture where heroism, story telling and drinking go hand in hand, and learn the finer points of how to insult your colleagues in Old English."

BBC4 - The Box That Changed Britain - "Poet Roger McGough narrates the extraordinary story of how a simple invention - the shipping container - changed the world forever and forced Britain into the modern era of globalisation.
With a blend of archive and modern-day filming, the incredible impact of the box is told through the eyes of dockers, seafarers, ship spotters, factory workers and logisticians. From quayside in huge container ports to onboard ships the size of four football pitches, the documentary explains how the shipping container has transformed our communities, economy and coastline."

BBC4 - Passport To Liverpool - "Documentary looking at the history of Liverpool, the former gateway to the British Empire whose character was built on the dockside by seafarers and immigrants who came from around the world seeking a new beginning.
It examines how the city's maritime history and mixture of people has made its citizens uncertain of their English identity."

Monday 10th

ITV1 - Wormwood Scrubs - 2-parts -"A compelling and candid look at life behind the locked doors of one of Europe’s largest prisons is revealed in a new documentary series for ITV1, Wormwood Scrubs. With unprecedented access to the London jail, the two part documentary follows the frenetic lives of prisoners and prison officers who make up this complex, noisy and disturbed community and includes powerful accounts from them on the emotional turmoil, frustration and anger inside."

BBC4 - Shanties and Sea Aongs with Gareth Malone - "The story of Britain's maritime past has a hidden history of shanties and sea songs, and choirmaster Gareth Malone has been travelling Britain's coast to explore this unique heritage. From dedicated traditionalists to groundbreaking recording artists, Gareth meets a variety of sea-singers from across the country.
His journey begins in Portsmouth where he meets a devoted shanty singer, before continuing on to Tyneside and the Yorkshire coast, where the Filey Fisherman's Choir, with an average age of 70, are determined to keep the tradition alive.
Gareth gets a fascinating insight into the songs of the Herring Girls when he visits Gardenstown in Scotland. In Whitby, he meets Kimber's Men, a local group who have dedicated themselves to writing and singing songs celebrating heroes of the sea, such as a rescue of 1881 when the sea was so rough the people of Whitby had to carry their 2-tonne lifeboat some six miles overland on a wooden trailer and in heavy snow to the bay where a ship had hit the rocks. Despite the exhaustion, they still managed to rescue the shipwrecked crew and passengers.
Gareth's journey ends in Port Isaac in Cornwall, where a group of local fishermen sing shanties and sea songs alongside their day job. Calling themselves the Fishermen's Friends, they have been so successful that they have landed a lucrative record deal."

Friday 14th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Tobacco's Child Workers - "Unreported World travels to Malawi to reveal that children as young as three are being illegally employed to produce tobacco, much of it destined to be consumed by British smokers.
Malawi's children suffer health problems from handling tobacco and some are trapped in bonded labour arrangements, leaving them unable to escape. Little seems to be being done to protect their health and wellbeing.
In Mchinji district, reporter Jenny Kleeman and producer Julie Noon find a group of 15 to 20 children sorting tobacco by the roadside. Emilida and her three children - including her three-year-old son - have been working there since dawn. She tells Kleeman the four of them will get about 80 pence for a day's work. The air is thick with tobacco dust and Emilida says it makes the family feel unwell.
A family of seven harvesting tobacco tell Kleeman they work every day from dawn to dusk. The children's hands are covered in a sticky brown residue and they say they suffer from severe headaches: a symptom of green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning, where high doses of nicotine are absorbed through the skin. In other tobacco-growing countries like the US farmers are advised to wear protective clothing, but there is no sign of it anywhere the team visits.
Farges, the mother of the family, tells Kleeman the entire family takes home the equivalent of £18 a year. Her children must work so they can fulfil the daily quota of tobacco the farm owner has demanded of them. She says the farm owners claim they're not getting a fair price for tobacco at auction and can't pay them more. The family wants to escape tobacco farming, but they've been forced to borrow money from the land owner and can't leave until they work off their debt. The UN says this is bonded labour, a modern form of slavery."

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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.