Off-air recordings for week 16-22 July 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.*

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Saturday 16 July

Drama Documentary

Capitalism: A Love Story

More4, 10:00pm-12:45am

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.

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution

BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/4, Gang of Four

Art writer Waldemar Januszczak explores the revolutionary achievements of the Impressionists. In the first episode, Waldemar delves into the back stories of four of the most influential Impressionists - Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Bazille - who together laid the foundations of the artistic movement. He finds out what social and cultural influences drove them to their style of painting, how they were united and how ultimately they challenged and changed art forever.

Waldemar journeys from the shores of the West Indies, to the progressive city of Paris to the suburbs of South London, where these four artists drew inspiration from the cities and towns in which they lived. Whether it be the infamous spot on the river Seine - La Grenouillere - where Monet and Renoir beautifully captured animated people, iridescent light and undulating water or the minimalist, non-sensationalised illustrations of Pissarro's coarse countryside paintings, Waldemar discovers how the Impressionists broke conventions by depicting every day encounters within the unpredictable and ever changing sights around them.

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Sunday 17 July

Drama

Classic Serial: The History of Titus Groan

BBC Radio 4, 3:00-4:00pm, 2/6, Titus Inherits

As tension between Mr Flay and Swelter, head chef of Gormenghast, takes a deadly turn, Titus's foster mother Keda is drawn back into her old life amongst the bright carvers. Meanwhile, the first of Steerpike's great plans comes to fruition as he manipulates the ladies Clarice and Cora to great and tragic effect.

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Monday 18th

Factual; Documentary

Russia: The Wild East

BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 31/50, Collectivisation

Collectivisation was Stalin's flagship policy, crucial to the creation of the New Soviet Man, moulded in the ways of socialism, and he couldn't afford to see it fail. But his confident announcement of victory, celebrated in the 1930s musical 'The Rich Bride' (a sort of Ukrainian 'Oklahoma!') was premature.

Martin Sixsmith draws on the memories of 84 year old Masha Alekseevna, who witnessed the drive to collectivise Soviet agriculture with the eyes of a startled child. The problem for the Bolsheviks was that they'd never had much support in the countryside. For millions of ordinary peasants collectivisation meant swapping the yoke of the private landlords for the new yoke of the state and thousands of towns and villages rose up in revolt. 25,000 shock troops - class-conscious urban workers, former soldiers and young communists - were sent to bring the countryside to heel.
Sixsmith travels to Veryaevo, 250 miles SE of Moscow, where one of the fiercest rebellions took place and resentment and resistance bubbled on even after the authorities regained control. The immediate result of collectivization was appalling, widespread famine - described in contemporary reports by British diplomat Gareth Jones, and Malcolm Muggeridge, one of the few Western journalists courageous enough to travel to the affected areas and report the truth.
Just as Soviet cinema was turning out films about happy singing peasants, cases of cannibalism were increasingly being reported in the Ukraine, where 6 to 8 million people died. Stalin hadn't forgotten the civil war when some Ukrainians had welcomed the Polish invaders and he doubted the loyalty of non Russian nationalities. His suspicions would grow, until they ripened into the purges that would leave their dreadful mark on the rest of the decade.

Factual; Science and Nature and Environment; Wildlife; Documentaries

The Truth About Wildlife

BBC2, 7:00-7:30, 3/3

Naturalist Chris Packham presents a hard hitting personal take on what's going wrong - and sometimes right - with our woodland and heathland wildlife and its conservation.

He finds non-native conifer plantations that do little to aid native wildlife and iconic places like the New Forest and Dartmoor that are suffering loss of habitat.
He asks whether we are spending too much on cute and cuddly species like dormice and whether we should concentrate instead on connecting up important habitats like precious heathland that has been fragmented over the years.

News; Documentaries

Panorama: Gerry and the GPs

In this special edition of Panorama, troubleshooter and businessman Sir Gerry Robinson examines the government's plans for the biggest shake-up of the NHS in its history. Sir Gerry travels the country, taking the temperature on support for the reforms and talking to GPs with opposing views. He finds how change has already started with the closure of many Primary Care Trusts, and asks Health Secretary Andrew Lansley if the future of the NHS is at risk should his reforms fail.

Religion and Ethics; Documentaries

The Life of Muhammad

BBC2, 9:00-10:00, 2/3, Holy Wars

In this second episode of The Life of Muhammad, presenter Rageh Omaar continues to chart the story of The Prophet Muhammad.

Drawing on the expertise and comment from some of the world's leading academics and commentators on Islam, Omaar assesses and shines a light on key events in Muhammad's life including the Night Journey to Jerusalem, his life threatening departure from Mecca, through to the establishment of the Constitution of Medina and the eight year war with the Meccan tribes.
In line with Islamic tradition the programme does not depict any images of the face of Muhammad, or feature any dramatic re-constructions of Muhammad's life.
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Tuesday 19th

Factual: Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

British Masters

BBC4, 3:00-4:00am, 2/3, In Search of England

The inter-war years were a period of alarming national change. With a generation of youth lost to the trenches and the cracks in the Empire growing fast, the nation's confidence was in tatters. If we were no longer a mighty Imperial power, what were we? John Nash's mesmerising visions of rural arcadia, Stanley Spencer's glimpses of everyday divinity, Alfred Munnings' prelapsarian nostalgia, Paul Nash's timeless mysticism, John Piper's crumbling ruins, even William Coldstream's blunt celebration of working-class life - all, in their own way, were attempts to answer this question. And, as a reprise of war grew ever more likely, they struggled more urgently than ever to create an image of Britain we could fight for.



Factual; Documentary


Russia: The Wild East

BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 32/50, Industrialisation

Martin Sixsmith stands at the restored 'People's Economic Achievements Exhibition' in Moscow. He remembers visiting as a child when "proud guides delighted in showing us foreigners round the extravagantly decorated pavilions showcasing the achievements of Soviet industry and technology." He then recalls the subsequent years of decay. "What a perfect metaphor," he says, "for the meteoric rise and subsequent sorry fall of the Soviet Union's mighty industrialization programme."

Stalin launched his first Five Year Plan in 1928, tapping into centuries-old fears of Russian vulnerability and the spectre of powerful enemies at the gates, to mobilise the nation in the face of overwhelming odds: "We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make up this distance in ten years... Either we do it, or they will crush us!"
The Five Year Plans set impossibly high targets and punitive timetables, but in spite of everything, the Soviet people rose to the challenge: output doubled and the Soviet Union became the world's second largest industrial producer. The surging energy of those years is captured in Mosolovs 'The Iron Foundry', and the iconic music Vremya Vperyod- Time Go Faster, which would introduce Soviet TV news bulletins up until 1991. But, as early as 1934 the reality was a sorry one. Despite Soviet propaganda which created a new national mythology (its heroes workers such as Alexei Stakhanov, a coalminer who mined a 102 tons of coal in one shift) when targets were not met, workers were branded 'wreckers' and saboteurs while relentless purges instilled constant anxiety -a great motivating factor, identified by playwright Alexander Afinogenov in his remarkably outspoken play 'Fear'.

Factual

Richard Hammond's Journey to the Centre of the Planet

BBC1, 9:00-10:00, 1/2

Our planet is unique. It's an extraordinary piece of engineering over four and a half billion years old. Now in a two-part series for BBC One, Richard Hammond embarks on a fascinating journey to the centre of the planet to investigate how the earth's machine dominates the modern world around us.

Using state of the art technology, Richard Hammond's Journey To The Centre Of The Planet lifts the lid on planet earth, peeling back the layers to reveal a machine more complex than anything else in the solar system. A giant 3D virtual earth brings together the latest scientific information from across the world – satellite maps, and sonar and radar images – to show us what's happening beneath our feet in a way we've never seen before.
Richard Hammond says: "In making this show I learned that our planet is far, far from being an inert lump of rock that we live on; it has a vital, dynamic role to play in defining and enabling our existence. People talk about going on a 'journey' in TV shows: well this has to be the ultimate such journey, not only across and around our world but deep into it. It's a journey that changed the way I think about the earth beneath our feet and I hope it does the same for the BBC One audience."

Factual; Documentaries

The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon

BBC4, 10:00-11:00, 1/3

Series which examines the recent discovery of 800 short films from the Edwardian Age, made by pioneering film-makers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon. Rescued after lying hidden in a cellar for over 80 years and restored to their original clarity, they throw new light on Britain at work and play before WWI. This first programme shows us life in the new cities as well cotton mills and factories.



Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Imagine... Harry Nilsson: The Missing Beatle

BBC1, 10:35-11:50pm, 4/5

Alan Yentob introduces John Scheinfeld's documentary Harry Nilsson - The Missing Beatle, a film that tells the story of the riotous life and music of Harry Nilsson.

Nilsson, a friend and hero of Lennon's, was one of the most successful and influential, but least known, songwriters of his generation. He is remembered as much for his wild lifestyle as for his outstanding performance of Everybody's Talkin' from the movie soundtrack Midnight Cowboy.
The film showcases new and archived audio and film, including home movies, music videos, promotional films and segments from the unreleased documentary made during the recording of Son Of Schmilsson, Did Somebody Drop His Mouse? The film also features interviews with Robin Williams, Yoko Ono, Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Ray Cooper, the Smothers Brothers and Micky Dolenz.

Factual; Life Stories

Travellers

BBC1, 11:50pm-12:55am, 1/2

The Stewarts are Scottish Travellers, proudly maintaining their traditional lifestyle, travelling the country in caravans and tents. They believe their culture is under threat, and that they are at odds with householders.

They want to foster better relations with the settled community, but they won't give up their Travelling lifestyle. They've let the cameras record their lives over a period of nine months, sharing precious moments, rarely witnessed outside their own community.
As the number of Travellers on the road shrinks, those that remain are determined to do whatever it takes to keep their culture alive.

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Wednesday 20th

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Britain Through A Lens: The Documentary Film Mob

BBC4, 3:00-4:00am

The unlikely story of how, between 1929 and 1945, a group of tweed-wearing radicals and pin-striped bureaucrats created the most influential movement in the history of British film. They were the British Documentary Movement and they gave Britons a taste for watching films about real life.

They were an odd bunch, as one wit among them later admitted. "A documentary director must be a gentleman... and a socialist." They were inspired by a big idea - that films about real life would change the world. That, if people of all backgrounds saw each other on screen - as they really were - they would get to know and respect each other more. As John Grierson, the former street preacher who founded the Movement said: "Documentary outlines the patterns of interdependence".
The Documentary Film Mob assembles a collection of captivating film portraits of Britain, during the economic crisis of the 1930s and the Second World War. Featuring classic documentaries about slums and coal mines, about potters and posties, about the bombers and the Blitz, the programme reveals the fascinating story of what was also going on behind the camera. Of how the documentary was born and became part of British culture.

Factual; Documentary


Russia: The Wild East

BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 33/50, Socialist Realism
"My husband was like the little bird in the old Russian poem: they capture him and squeeze him by the throat -and then they tell him to sing!" Irina Shostakovich tells Martin Sixsmith. "They banned his music, he lost his job. But he wrote his secret revenge, his music".
For this programme, Sixsmith has spoken to those who lived through the persecution of the Stalin years - writers, composers and henchmen of the regime - to try to understand the role of art in a time of fear. "It allowed us to keep alive our freedom of memory and independence of thought in the dark years when 'they' were trying to reduce us to nothing..." says Yevgeny Pasternak of whose father, Boris, Stalin wrote on his police file: 'Leave that cloud-dweller in peace'. Sixsmith tells the stories of Anna Akhmatova who committed her verse to memory and burned the manuscripts; Osip Mandelstam who let rip - just once - with savage unguarded hatred for Stalin, was arrested and sent to the Gulag where he died; theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold who was tortured in the cells of the Lubyanka.
The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky epitomises the destiny of many who loved the revolution, and then, desperately out-of-love, committed suicide; and Sergei Prokofiev who fled abroad only to find he could live neither in his native land nor outside it. On his return, he was denounced by Tikhon Khrennikov, the head of the Soviet Composers' Union, and like Miaskovsky and Khatchaturian forced to make a humiliating public recantation for his musical 'crimes'.
When Khrennikov spoke to Sixsmith shortly before his death he fiercely rejected suggestions that he'd been a willing accomplice in the repression of musical life: "When I said No! it meant No. But - what else could I have done? Stalin's word was law."

Factual; History; Documentaries

Time To Remember

BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 2/12, Stage and Screen

In the 1950s, the newsreel company Pathe mined their archive to produce a series of programmes for television called Time to Remember. Made by the producer Peter Baylis, they chronicled the political, social and cultural changes that occurred during the first half of the 20th century.

Each episode was narrated by a prominent actor such as Ralph Richardson, Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quayle, Edith Evans, Basil Rathbone and Joyce Grenfell, all reading scripts recalling historic, evocative or significant moments from an intriguing past.
In 2010, the material from the original Time to Remember has been collected together thematically to create a new 12-part series under the same title that offers a rewarding perspective on the events, people and innovations from history that continue to shape and influence the world around us.
Archive footage from the theatres, music halls and cinemas of the 1920s and 30s combines with characterful voiceover to give a glimpse of the entertainment industries in their early 20th century golden age. It includes footage of Charles Laughton applying his own stage make-up, chorus line auditions and rehearsals in the West End, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks visiting Europe, and Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie, 1929's Blackmail.

Factual; History; Documentaries

Bristol on Film

BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm

Bristol has fascinated film-makers from the moment the camera was invented. From shipping, sherry and tobacco to Brunel, bridges and the blitz, this programme explores the visual archives that document this ancient city.

Regional TV: Life Through a Local Lens


This is the story of how we fell in love with regional telly. Contributors including Angela Rippon, Michael Parkinson and Martin Bell describe the excitement and sense of adventure that existed during the very early days of local TV. In the late 50s and early 60s viewers were offered a new vision of the places where they lived. ITV and the BBC took advantage of transmitter technology and battled for the attention of an emerging regional audience.

The programme makers were an eclectic bunch but shared a common passion for a new form of TV that they were creating. For more than half a century they have reported on local stories. The early film-makers were granted freedom to experiment and create different shows and formats, including programmes that would later become huge hits. Regional TV also acted as a launch pad for presenters and reporters who would become household names.
But just how real was this portrayal of regional life? And how will local life be reflected on our screens in the future?


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Thursday 20th

Factual; Documentary


Russia: The Wild East

BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 34/50, Show Trials

Sergei Kirov had been a loyal ally of Stalin in the 1920s, but his popularity made Stalin regard him as a rival. Martin Sixsmith visits the "rather sumptuous 5 room apartment" in St Petersburg from which Kirov left for work on December 1st 1934. He never arrived.

Rumours that Stalin ordered Kirov's murder would persist for many years; the next day Stalin personally interrogated the assassin, forcing him to sign a statement that he had acted as part of an opposition plot led by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Within days 100s of people were arrested and executed without trial and in the following years Stalin used the Kirov murder as a pretext to exterminate 100s of 1000s of people whom he considered enemies or potential enemies. Leading Bolsheviks were arrested and tortured until they confessed to imaginary crimes against the state; the Soviet Union was gripped by fear; denunciations proliferated. Executions could be ordered without a judge.
Families were held responsible for the crimes of a relative, and children were taught to inform on anyone they suspected of disloyalty to Stalin. The Tale of Pavlik Morozov, a schoolboy who denounced his own father was compulsory reading in schools; plays, paintings and an opera inculcated the message that loyalty to one's family is less important than loyalty to the state.
With the murder of Trotsky who, from his in exile in Mexico had kept up a vendetta against Stalin, in 1940, Stalin had achieved his goal of removing all actual or potential rivals for power. But the purges of the 1930s had disastrous consequences. Millions died, the economy suffered, national security was undermined, and Stalin had destroyed the cream of the Soviet Union's armed forces at the very moment that the clouds of world war were gathering on the horizon.

News; Documentary

Tonight: Chemical Cosh for Kids?

ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm

The number of hyperactive children being given controversial drugs to control their behaviour has almost doubled in the last five years. Julie Etchingham investigates what is behind the increase and asks whether parents and doctors are too keen to use medication to sedate children as young as four years old.

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Friday 20th

Factual; Documentary


Russia: The Wild East

BBC Radio 4, 3:45-4:00pm, 35/50, The Faustian Pact

No details for this particular episode available yet. 

Factual; History; Documentary

The Golden Age of Canals

BBC2, 9:00-10:00

Most people thought that when the working traffic on canals faded away after the war, it would be the end of their story. But they were wrong. A few diehard enthusiasts and boat owners campaigned, lobbied and dug, sometimes with their bare hands, to keep the network of narrow canals open.

Some of these enthusiasts filmed their campaigns and their home movies tell the story of how, in the teeth of much political opposition, they saved the inland waterways for the nation and, more than 200 years after they were first built, created a second golden age of the canals.
Stan Offley, an IWA activist from Ellesmere Port, filmed his boating trips around the wide canals in the 40s, 50s and 60s in 16mm colour. But equally charming is the film made by Ed Frangleton, with help from Harry Arnold, of a hostel boat holiday on the Llangollen Canal in 1961. There are the films shot by ex-working boatmen Ike Argent from his home in Nottinghamshire and looked after by his son Barry.
There is astonishing film of the last days of working boats, some shot by John Pyper when he spent time with the Beechey's in the 60s, film taken by Keith Christie of the last days of the cut around the BCN, and the films made by Keith and his mate Tony Gregory of their attempts to keep working the canals through their carrying company, Midland Canal Transport.
There is film of key restorations, the Stourbridge 16 being talked about with great wit and affection by one of the leading activists in that watershed of restorations in the mid-60s, David Tomlinson, and John Maynard's beautiful films of the restoration of the Huddersfield, 'the impossible restoration', shot over two decades.
All these and more are in the programme alongside the people who made the films and some of the stars of them. Together they tell the story of how, in the years after 1945, a few people fought the government like David fought Goliath to keep canals open and restore ones that had become defunct, and won against all the odds.

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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.