Saturday 30th October
BBC2 - Timewatch: The Pharaoh's Lost City - "It's 1350BC; Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten - ruler of the biggest empire in the ancient world - commands his people to move 400 km and build a huge city from scratch to house his new religion.
The city of Amarna was the place of the most dramatic upheaval in the 3,000 year religious history of Ancient Egypt and the vision of just one man. Here Akhenaten would shrink the old world of 2,000 gods to 1. He would give his queen - the beautiful Nefertiti - equal status and he would radically change art and society. He set out to create the greatest city the world had ever seen and it appeared he had succeeded. But the pharaoh’s great city would last just 20 years.
For over a century archaeologists have been excavating the ruins at Amarna. But recently a team under the directorship of Prof. Barry Kemp (University of Cambridge) has made a remarkable discovery. For the first time they have unearthed, in a desert cemetery, the skeletons of Amarna’s workers; the people who built and lived in the city.
What these 3,500 year old human remains are revealing, is a city very different to what was previously thought. Far from being a place of plenty, biological anthropologist Prof. Jerry Rose (University of Arkansas) has discovered trauma on the vertebrae of youths in Akhenaten’s city, the evidence of backbreaking work. High rates of Anaemia –particularly in the bones of children - is evidence of a chronic diet.
With unique access to a 30-year long project, using dramatic reconstruction and Computer Generated Imaging, Timewatch reveals the hidden truths of life in Amarna, during one of the most turbulent periods of Egyptian history - the time of the rebel pharaoh..."
Channel 4 - Apocalypse: the Second World War - "This six-part series tells the epic story of World War II, providing an insight into the experiences of the millions of soldiers who fought across countries and continents, and the moving stories of the millions of civilians who saw their homes destroyed and lives disrupted by the cataclysm of war.
To tell this story, the best footage of World War II has been painstakingly transformed into colour, using digital techniques. Along with original colour home movies."
Monday 1st November
BBC2 - Tea Party America: This World - "The fastest-growing political movement in the US today is the so-called Tea Party - a right-wing grassroots revolt with hundreds of thousands of supporters and local branches all over the country. Now as the US prepares to vote in crucial mid-term elections, political journalist Andrew Neil is off on a whistle-stop tour of the country to find out what is behind it and why it is spreading like wildfire. The Tea Party wants to change America - but their first target is the Republican Party.
Urged on by the likes of Fox News' most prominent host, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party darling Sarah Palin, they are trying to replace established Republican politicians with Tea Party candidates. But as Andrew Neil discovers, their real target is the man in the White House. They believe Obama is an out-and-out socialist and the Federal Government well on the way to what they see as tyranny. This extraordinary eruption of anger is certainly changing the face of America."
Channel 4 - Dispatches: Street Kids - "Street Kids: Dispatches follows four teenagers over six months who are struggling to fend for themselves on the streets across Britain. They're simultaneously at risk and a risk to society."
Channel 4 - Coppers - 6 -part series - "Series Summary As police budgets, and numbers, come under threat, this hard-hitting series reveals what police officers across England really think about being on the frontline of 21st-century Britain.
With access to police forces across the country - from Kent to West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester to Cambridgeshire - and from inner cities to rural beats, Coppers shows what police officers are up against every day of their working lives.
The series captures the reality of the job: from the riot police who face serious public disorder on our streets, to the seasoned custody sergeants who've seen it all, from the staff facing time-wasters calling 999 to emergency response teams racing to the scene only to find themselves acting as social workers or marriage guidance counsellors, and from traffic cops picking up the pieces after accidents to the thin blue line who face abuse and violence from binge-drinkers every weekend."
Tuesday 2nd
BBC4 - Natural World: Cuckoo - "The sound of the cuckoo is to many the very essence of spring, yet behind the magical call is a bird that is a cheat, a thief and a killer. Just how does the cuckoo trick other birds into accepting its eggs and raising its young? Why don't the duped foster parents react as they watch the baby cuckoo destroy their own eggs and chicks? And why do they work so relentlessly to feed a demanding chick that looks nothing like them and will soon dwarf them?
In this film, new photography is combined with archive footage and the latest scientific findings to solve a puzzle which, as narrator David Attenborough explains, has perplexed nature-watchers for thousands of years."
BBC4 - Twitchers: A Very British Obsession - "Every year, a secret tribe take to the roads of Britain. In the space of a few months they will drive thousands of miles and spend thousands of pounds in pursuit of their prey. Their aim is to see as many birds as possible, wherever that bird may be.
Welcome to the very competitive world of the twitcher - obsessives who'll stop at nothing to get their bird."
BBC2 - Turn Back Time: The High Street - 4-part series - "BBC One brings the story of the British High Street to life in Turn Back Time, an exciting and ambitious new series that transports four empty shops and a group of contemporary shop-keeping families back to the High Street's heyday in the 1870s, before propelling them through a century of dizzying change right up to the Seventies.
In the picturesque market square in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, the families' lives are turned upside down as they get to grips with how shopkeepers lived and worked in six key eras of British history.
Laced with real-life entertainment, family drama and human endeavour, the families have to deal with whatever history throws at them.
Alongside all the usual pressures of running a business, they'll have to learn traditional skills and make their own produce by hand – each episode throwing new challenges their way as the High Street marches on into the modern era.
They are overseen by Turn Back Time's own unique chamber of commerce (Gregg Wallace, Tom Herbert and Juliet Gardiner), which sets the challenges for each era and enforces accurate rules and regulations – revealing who has delivered on best customer service and weekly sales as the decades tick by.
The families will also live the life of each period, dressing, eating and playing as they once would have done – from 18-hour working days and wartime rationing, to evenings of entertainment sitting around the wireless, they'll experience it all.
But these are no museums. The shops will be serving modern-day customers who are used to the pace and convenience of 21st-century shopping.
While the shopkeepers struggle with pounds, shillings and pence, will their customers welcome the old-fashioned delights of personal service and hand-delivered goods or will queuing, weighing and hand-wrapping tax their patience?
BBC Learning is also offering viewers the chance to continue the Turn Back Time experience in their own area. Working with local history societies museums, libraries and archives, Hands On History will offer a range of events and activities around the country, including a number of historical pop-up shops."
BBC2 - Eat, Pray, Light - "What is Diwali? For many it's like Christmas and New Year rolled into one day in October-November. But few non-Hindus might know that Diwali is in fact the third day in a festival that lasts no less than five days.
This documentary features a cast of British Hindus, including a family, priests, theologians, artists, entrepreneurs, and The One Show's Anita Rani, who day by day reveal the meaning of each ritual and custom.
Colourful original illustrations of iconic stories from the Hindu scriptures show how each day is a celebration of a distinct spiritual and moral message designed to help every Hindu cast off their secular baggage and replenish their inner spiritual light."
BBC4 - A Time To Remember - Nations At Play - "Lesley Sharp narrates as original newsreel and 1950s voiceover are used to illustrate how Britons spent their leisure time during the first half of the 20th century. Includes footage of Henley regattas, frolics at the seaside, the Victorian fairground, horse riding in Hyde Park, Royal Ascot in 1919, Deauville in the 20s and the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley."
Wednesday 3rd
BBC2 - Natural World: The Dolphins of Shark Bay - "A dolphin is about to be born in the treacherous waters of Shark Bay in Western Australia. Puck, the wise mother, must use all her skills to keep her newborn safe from the sharks that sweep into the bay every year. With the help of her close knit family of females she must teach the vulnerable baby dolphin the secrets of survival. From whistling to her unborn calf, to the first few hours of baby Samu's life and the struggles her eldest son faces leaving home, this film provides a rare insight into the lives of bottlenose dolphins."
BBC2 - Horizon: Asteroids - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - "Famed for their ability to inflict Armageddon from outer space, asteroids are now revealing the secrets of how they are responsible for both life and death on our planet.
Armed with an array of powerful telescopes, scientists are finding up to 3000 new asteroids every night. And some are heading our way.
But astronomers have discovered that it's not the giant rocks that are the greatest danger - it's the small asteroids that pose a more immediate threat to Earth.
Researchers have explained the photon propulsion that propels these rocks across space, and have discovered that some asteroids are carrying a mysterious cargo of frost and ice across the solar system that could have helped start life on earth."
BBC4 - A History of the World: The Clock That Changed The World - "Adam Hart-Davis tells the story of the amazing 280-year-old wooden clock, made in Lincolnshire, that changed timekeeping for ever and helped solve the problem of how to navigate round the world.
Adam tells the amazing story of John Harrison and gets to grips with the clock in Leeds, helping to put it together and make it run. He also makes his own wooden clock to show how Harrison did it.
Adam takes to the sea at Hull to show why finding your position was so difficult in the 1700s and why sailors so often got it wrong, with tragic results. He shows how Harrison changed all that, eventually designing an incredibly accurate portable watch that Captain Cook took on his second voyage.
Bringing the story bang up to date, Adam shows how the idea of using time to find your position was key to Captain Cook, but is also at the heart of today's satellite navigation systems. On the way, he finds evidence of John Harrison and his brother James (also a joiner) round north Lincolnshire."
BBC4 - Birds Britannia - 4-part series - "Series looking at the different birds that live in the UK and the stories they can tell us about the British people over time."
Thursday 4th
Channel 4 - What The Green Movement Got Wrong - (followed immediately after by a live debate chaired by Jon Snow) - "A group of environmentalists across the world believe that, in order to save the planet, humanity must embrace the very science and technology they once so stridently opposed.
In this film, these life-long diehard greens advocate radical solutions to climate change, which include GM crops and nuclear energy.
They argue that by clinging to an ideology formed more than 40 years ago, the traditional green lobby has failed in its aims and is ultimately harming its own environmental cause.
As author and environmentalist Mark Lynas says, 'Being an environmentalist was part of my identity and most of my friends were environmentalists. We were involved in the whole movement together. It took me years to actually begin to question those core, cherished beliefs.
'It was so challenging it was almost like going over to the dark side. It was a like a horrible dark secret you couldn't share with anyone.'."
Friday 5th
BBC2 - David Attenborough's First Life - 2-parts - "In fifty years of broadcasting, Sir David Attenborough has travelled the globe to document the living world in all its wonder. Now, in the landmark series First Life, he goes back in time in search of the very first animals.
First Life is told with stunning photography, state of the art visual effects and the captivating charm of the world’s favourite naturalist. It will be broadcast as a two-part series in the UK on BBC Two at 9pm on Friday 5th and Friday 12th November 2010, and is shown as a two-hour special by Discovery Channel in the US. It will be shown by broadcasters around the world, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in 2011."
Channel 4 - Unreported World: Pakistan After The Floods - "Reporter Peter Oborne and director Simon Phillips travel to Pakistan to find that the floods may have receded but their catastrophic consequences continue. They discover that incompetence and alleged corruption have caused poor areas to be flooded and rich ones protected. And in a country whose institutions are failing the people they are supposed to protect, they find ordinary Pakistanis striving to rebuild their lives."
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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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