Off-air recordings for week 11-17 June 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.*

Monday 13th June

BBC2 - Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die - "In a frank and personal documentary, author Sir Terry Pratchett considers how he might choose to end his life. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2008, Terry wants to know whether he might be able to end his life before his disease takes over.

Travelling to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland, Terry witnesses first hand the procedures set out for assisted death, and confronts the point at which he would have to take the lethal drug."

BBC2 - Choosing To Die: Newsnight Debate - "Jeremy Paxman speaks to Terry Pratchett about his documentary, and a panel of studio guests debate the controversial issues surrounding assisted dying."


BBC4 - World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel - ""Marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, historian Professor David Reynolds re-assesses Stalin's role in the life and death struggle between Germany and Russia in World War Two, which, he argues, was ultimately more critical for British survival than 'Our Finest Hour' in the Battle of Britain itself.

The name Stalin means 'man of steel', but Reynolds's penetrating new account reveals how the reality of Stalin's war in 1941 did not live up to that name. Travelling to Russian battlefield locations, he charts how Russia was almost annihilated within a few months as Stalin lurched from crisis to crisis, coming close to a nervous breakdown.
Reynolds shows how Stalin learnt to compromise in order to win, listening to his generals and downplaying communist ideology to appeal instead to the Russian people's nationalist fighting spirit. He also squares up to the terrible moral dilemma at the heart of World War Two. Using original telegrams and official documents, he looks afresh at Winston Churchill's controversial visit to Moscow in 1942 and re-examines how Britain and America were drawn into alliance with Stalin, a dictator almost as murderous as the Nazi enemy."

Tuesday 14th June

BBC2 - This World: The Invasion Of Lampedusa - "How a crisis on a tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean is changing the face of immigration in Europe. This spring, in the wake of the uprisings across the Arab world, the Italian island of Lampedusa, just 70 miles from the African coast, has seen the arrival of over 40,000 migrants from Tunisia and Libya.

This programme charts how, within weeks, its small migrant reception centre is overflowing, and the island's tourist economy faces meltdown. The islanders openly revolt, blockading the small port and riot in the streets. Local mayor Bernadino de Rubeis makes desperate attempts to keep everyone calm, with limited results.
Only the arrival of beleaguered president Silvio Berlusconi seems to solve the problem, but his solutions are short-lived - weeks later, thousands more Libyans are arriving seeking asylum, prompting panic in Brussels, the closing of European borders and the possible collapse of the EU's celebrated Schengen Agreement."

Channel 4 - Sri Lanka's Killing Fields - "Jon Snow presents a forensic investigation into the final weeks of the quarter-century-long civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the secessionist rebels, the Tamil Tigers. The programme features devastating new video evidence of war crimes - some of the most horrific footage Channel 4 has ever broadcast.

Captured on mobile phones, both by Tamils under attack and government soldiers as war trophies, the disturbing footage shows: the extra-judicial executions of prisoners; the aftermath of targeted shelling of civilian camps; and dead female Tamil fighters who appear to have been raped or sexually assaulted, abused and murdered.
The film is made and broadcast as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon faces growing criticism for refusing to launch an investigation into 'credible allegations' that Sri Lankan forces committed war crimes during the closing weeks of the bloody conflict with the Tamil Tigers.
In April 2011, Ban Ki-moon published a report by a UN-appointed panel of experts, which concluded that as many as 40,000 people were killed in the final weeks of the war between the Tamil Tigers and government forces.
It called for the creation of an international mechanism to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law committed by government forces and the Tamil Tigers during that time.
This film provides powerful evidence that will lend new urgency to the panel's call for an international inquiry to be mounted, including harrowing interviews with eye-witnesses, new photographic stills, official Sri Lankan army video footage, and satellite imagery.
Also examined in the film are some of the horrific atrocities carried out by the Tamil Tigers, who used civilians as human shields.
Channel 4 News has consistently reported on the bloody denouement of Sri Lanka's civil war. Sri Lanka's Killing Fields presents a further damning account of the actions of Sri Lankan forces, in a war that the government still insists was conducted with a policy of Zero Civilian Casualties.
The film raises serious questions about the consequences if the UN fails to act, not only with respect to Sri Lanka but also to future violations of international law."


BBC2 - Wonderland: The Kids Who Play With Fire - "Documentary following three children who have a history of setting fires. Ten-year-old Liam sleeps on a charred mattress, Ryan is brazenly fascinated by flames, and 14-year-old Hulya has repeatedly set her bedroom alight. Fire service counsellors, determined to put a stop to their behaviour, try to understand the anger and frustration that provokes them."

ITV - Baby Hospital - new 3 part series - "New documentary series Baby Hospital follows the moving stories of the babies being cared for on the Neonatal Unit at Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

Everyone hopes for a healthy happy baby – but this three part series looks at the one in ten cases where things don’t go to plan, and the baby ends up in intensive care, teetering between life and death.
With unique access to the hospital, the three part series will focus on babies born as much as 16 weeks early, as well as the stories of their families, providing a rare and intimate insight into the intensely demanding work of the doctors and nurses tasked with doing all they can to save their tiny patients’ lives.
The Women’s Hospital in Liverpool is the largest of its kind in the country. As a centre of excellence, its dedicated staff prides themselves on being at the cutting edge of neonatal science. They provide round the clock care for babies born prematurely, with low weight or who have a medical condition requiring specialist treatment. The neonatal unit cares for a thousand babies a year - some of the smallest and sickest - babies who weigh just half a pound, and who are on the cusp of life.
Dr Chris Dewhurst explains: “Our little babies are the most vulnerable of all patients really. The baby has not been asked to be born early or poorly. I always think this is the baby’s first day alive; he hasn’t got his mum and dad here, so we need to take care of him and treat him like our own baby.
“The dream of everyone when they think about babies is these very cute cuddly little things in white nappies being taken home to beautiful houses and that’s not always the case.
“I like to think of the neonatal unit as a happy place but we have to accept that we experience the extremes of human emotion on here. We will have the elation of parents taking home their 24 week baby, through to the despair and sadness of parents who are expecting a normal term healthy term baby and something goes wrong.”
For most parents the birth of a baby is a time of great happiness and excitement. But when there are complications, a baby is born prematurely or has medical problems, parents face an emotional roller coaster.
The series shows the devotion and determination of the nursing staff as they battle to save the lives of babies in their care, and the courage of the families as they try to cope with difficult and heart rending decisions about their children’s future.
Executive producer Paul Hamann said: “Nine out of ten babies in the UK are born healthy, so most of us take having a healthy baby for granted.
“But the senior staff at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, the largest in this country, wanted to tell the real story of what happens to the one in ten, where things don’t go to plan – and to show exactly what that can mean for families.”

Thursday 16th

BBC1 - Breaking Into Britain - "Evan Davis presents a Panorama investigation into economic migrants who illegally enter Britain, asking how difficult it is and why they risk so much to achieve their goals. Reporter Shoaib Sharifi begins in his homeland of Afghanistan, where he meets those prepared to smuggle themselves onto lorries, while Ugandan-born Kassim Kayira examines the trade in fake documents that some Nigerians are using to fly into the UK."



Channel 4 - The Sex Researchers - new 3 part series - "For over 100 years, pioneering men and women have been uncovering our deepest secrets. Their methods have been visionary, kinky and sometimes bizarre, and their findings have transformed our sex lives.This first episode looks at how sex researchers have tried to understand how the opposite sex works.

One sex researcher in Canada believes men and women are turned on in very different ways. Her experiment shows heterosexual men respond to straight sex: no surprise!
But women it seems are aroused by images of any kind of sex, from gay men to bonking monkeys; but they don't necessarily know their body is responding. Is sex in the mind or in the loins? And are men and women fundamentally different? Then there's the orgasm. For men it's clearly linked to making babies - but for women? What was its purpose? In the 1950s, gynaecologist Bill Masters teamed up with his secretary Virginia Johnson to take a more rigorous look. Together they recorded 10,000 orgasms in their laboratory, and concluded that, for women, orgasm was simply for pleasure.
Their book, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a best seller, and they became sex research superstars."


BBC3 - Kids Behind Bars - 3 part series - "Kids Behind Bars is a new, extraordinary, three–part series which tells the stories of Britain's youngest criminals. Filming in a secure unit for a year the series documents the journeys of boys and girls who are behind bars, to tell their stories and explore what it's like to be locked up while you're still a child."


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*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.