Off-air recordings for week 21-27 May 2011

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 22nd May

BBC2 - Louis Theroux: Miami Mega Jail - 2 parts - "In the first episode of this two-part series, Louis spends time in one of the most notorious sections of Miami County Jail: the fifth and sixth floor of 'Main Jail', where many of the most volatile inmates are incarcerated.  Held in large cage-like dwellings for up to 24 men, the inmates have developed a strange and violent jail culture. The men - who remain in the cells almost all the time and may only leave for yard time twice a week - live under the sway of a gladiatorial code. They fight each other for food, for status, and often just to pass the endless hours of confinement. Trips to the infirmary are a frequent occurrence as inmates are viciously attacked and beaten, but the guards say they are powerless to end the abuse."


Monday 23rd May

BBC2 - All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace - 3 part series - "A series of films about how we have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.

This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems - without hierarchy.
The film tells the story of two perfect worlds. One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. Many of them were also disciples of Ayn Rand. They believed that the new computer networks would allow the creation of a society where everyone could follow their own desires, yet there would not be anarchy. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who had also been a disciple of Ayn Rand. He became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism - "Like a New Planet", he said.
But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by the two dynamic human forces - love and power."

Wednesday 25th May

More 4 - True Stories: Crack House - "In 2001, Darrell 'Duck' Davis recruited a group of young men from the South Side of Chicago to help him take over the drug trade in Rockford, Illinois. For four years they sold a kilo of hard drugs each week, terrorised neighbourhoods and intimidated witnesses.

The Rockford Police Department made a string of arrests but were unable to curtail the violence. And, in 2005, when gang member Bradford Dodson attempted to execute a rival drug dealer in a busy McDonald's, the Police Department called in the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) who set the gang up in a 'surveillance house' and gathered over 1000 hours of footage as evidence.
This film uses the footage to provide a fascinating insight into what happens in a drug house, revealing the wide range of people who came to the house to buy drugs, and the truth behind the gang members' extravagant boasts of violence and wealth."


Thursday 26th

BBC4 - Heath Vs Wilson: The 10 Year Duel - "Harold Wilson and Edward Heath are two different men equally overlooked by history, but they were the political titans of the era in which Britain changed for ever. For ten years they faced each other in the House of Commons and fought four general elections, three of which were amongst the most exciting of the century. They scorned one another, yet were cast from the same mould. Both promised a revolution of meritocracy and dynamism in the economy and society. Both failed, but together they presided over a decade that redefined the nation: Britain ceased to be a world power and entered Europe; the postwar consensus in which they both believed was destroyed; Thatcherism and New Labour were born."

This documentary tells the story of their personal and political duel in the words of those who watched it - colleagues in the cabinet and government, and the journalists at the ringside. Set against a backdrop of the music and style of the 1960s and 70s it brings the era vividly to life."

Channel 4 - Breaking A Female Paedophile Ring - "Colin Blanchard, Vanessa George, Angela Allen, Tracy Lyons and Tracey Dawber provoked widespread revulsion and made international headlines after their sexual offences against children came to light in 2009.

With unique access to the police investigation, Cutting Edge is the first film to take an in-depth forensic look at this criminal web, detailing how it operated, and what motivated the five people within it.
This carefully crafted, sensitive and revealing documentary uses police interviews with the offenders, and first-hand testimonies from family members of the offenders and the parents of a possible victim.
Chilling unseen police evidence from a multi-force inquiry is pieced together in an attempt to understand how Colin Blanchard persuaded four women - all mothers - to abuse children.
The film also reveals the painstaking police investigations in Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Plymouth and Portsmouth that led to five arrests and subsequent successful convictions.
To understand the emotional and psychological fallout for those most intimately affected by the ring, the film-makers hear from the parents of a child who attended the Little Ted's Nursery in Plymouth, where Vanessa George worked.
Unaware of the secret lives of their loved ones, the perpetrators' relatives also talk candidly about how the legacy of abuse continues to affect them. The husband of one of the offenders gives detailed insight into the trauma of betrayal.
And in another powerful interview, a close relative of one of the female abusers - a young woman who has been forced into hiding - describes how she was driven from her home after the news was made public."


Friday 27th

Channel 4 - Unreported World - The Battle For Ivory Coast - "Reporter Seyi Rhodes and Director Alex Nott visit Abidjan in Ivory Coast, West Africa, to investigate the country's escalating political crisis, only to find themselves one of the few television crews to witness the terrifying violence between rival factions. They reveal how Laurent Gbagbo has clung to power despite losing the UN-backed elections, and gain access to some of his most feared supporters, including Charles Ble Goude, who agrees to let them accompany him to a series of mass rallies against their president's rival Alassane Ouattara."

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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.