Tuesday 29 May 2012

Off-air recordings for week 2-8 June 2012

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


*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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Saturday 2nd June 2012


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

BBC1, 8:20-9:20pm

There are more images of Elizabeth II than any other historical figure, but how to paint a queen is one of the trickiest of artistic challenges. Alastair Sooke looks at the depiction of Britain's female rulers, from Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I to Queen Victoria and our current monarch, and discovers how queenly portraits reveal Britain's changing ideas about women and power.

Factual; Travel; Documentaries

BBC4, 10:30pm-12:00am

Beneath the America we think we know lies a nation hidden from view - a nomadic nation, living on the roads, the rails and in the wild open spaces. In its deserts, forests, mountain ranges and on the plains, a huge population of modern nomads pursues its version of the American dream - to live free from the world of careers, mortgages and the white picket fence.


When British writer Richard Grant moved to the USA more than 20 years ago it wasn't just a change of country. He soon found himself in a world of travellers and the culture of roadside America - existing alongside, but separate from, conventional society. In this film he takes to the road again, on a journey without destination.


In a series of encounters and unplanned meetings, Richard is guided by his own instincts and experiences - and the serendipity of the road. Travelling with loners and groups, he encounters the different 'tribes' of nomads as he journeys across the deserts of America's south west.


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Sunday 3rd June 2012

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries


The Elgin Marbles
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm


Drama-documentary in which art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon tells the story of the greatest cultural controversy of the last 200 years. He explores the history of the Elgin Marbles, tells the dramatic story of their removal from Athens and cites the arguments for and against their return to Greece.

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Monday 4th June

Factual; Documentaries; History


The Lighthouse Stevensons
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm



As the author of Kidnapped and Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson was known and celebrated across the world, but his family – who pioneered the building of lighthouses across Scotland – were the people he admired. He once wrote with pride: “Whenever I smell saltwater, I know that I am not far from one of the works of my ancestors.” 


This new documentary charts the work of the Lighthouse Stevensons over the course of generations from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, creating lighthouses on some of the most storm-lashed and inaccessible outcrops of Scotland imaginable. Stunning aerial photography of many of the locations demonstrates that creating these buildings would be a difficult job now, never mind then. 


The family tradition was started with Edinburgh man Thomas Smith, who installed his first light on Kinnaird Castle, near Fraserburgh, in 1787. He passed the baton on to his son-in-law (and stepson) Robert Stevenson, who founded a dynasty of lighthouse engineers including sons, Allan, David and Thomas (father of RLS), and in turn David’s sons David Alan and Charles and finally Charles’s son, David Alan. 


Lighthouse aficionados prepare to celebrate the 200 years since the first light was lit on the famous Bell Rock Lighthouse, near Arbroath, on February 1, 1811. 
Built before the age of steam, on a rock that was submerged much of the day, the Bell Rock light was an engineering masterpiece and the wonder of the age. Regarded as the first major project for Robert Stevenson (in tandem with John Rennie), it is a fitting backdrop in the documentary for an interview with author of The Lighthouse Stevensons, Bella Bathurst. 

Factual; Documentaries
BBC4, 10:00-11:25pm


Documentary telling the double-edged story of the grave risks we pose to our own survival in the name of progress. With rich imagery the film connects financial collapse, growing inequality and global oligarchy with the sustainability of mankind itself. The film explores how we are repeatedly destroyed by 'progress traps' - alluring technologies which serve immediate need but rob us of our long term future. Featuring contributions from those at the forefront of evolutionary thinking such as Stephen Hawking and economic historian Michael Hudson. With Martin Scorsese as executive producer, the film leaves us with a challenge - to prove that civilisation and survival is not the biggest progress trap of them all. 


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Tuesday 5th June

Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology


The Transit of Venus: a Horizon Special
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm



Liz Bonnin presents a Horizon special about a rare and beautiful event in our solar system, one that we should all be able to see for ourselves - the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It will start just after 11pm of the 5th of June 2012 - and won't happen again for more than a century.


Joined by solar physicist Dr Lucie Green and oceanographer Dr Helen Czerski, Liz will reveal everything that to know about the transit of Venus, delving into its past and finding out how the transit is being used in our hunt for life on distant planets hundreds of light years away. She explains why the transit of Venus is such a rare event and reveals how Venus and Earth's orbits mean that the planets are only aligned twice every one hundred years. Liz also explores dramatic new evidence that life on Earth can be supported even in a cloud and finds out how Venus is transforming our understanding of the extremes of life on our planet.


Also in the programme, Dr Lucie Green charts the incredible story of Captain James Cook's dramatic 1769 voyage to successfully record the transit for the very first time. They knew that if they reached Tahiti in time to observe the transit they would achieve something scientists had been grappling with for centuries - a figure for the size of our solar system. Then at the SETI Institute in California, Lucie finds out how Venus has transformed our hunt for exoplanets and our search for alien life. Dr Helen Czerski discovers what Venus has to tell us about life on Earth. Although Venus and Earth both exist in the Goldilocks Zone - theoretically able to host liquid water and support life - the two planets differ dramatically.


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Wednesday 6th June

Factual; History; Documentaries


The Secret History of Our Streets
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/6



Charles Booth’s vast 1886 Survey of London ranked each one of London's streets according to the class of its residents. In a major series for BBC Two, in partnership with The Open University, The Secret History Of Our Streets returns to six of those streets to discover how their fortunes have ebbed and flowed over the last 125 years.


Episode one features Deptford High Street, known in Booth’s time as the Oxford Street of South London. Today, marooned amid 1970's housing blocks, it’s one of the poorest shopping streets in London.


Featuring compelling accounts from residents, including one family who has been trading on the high street for 250 years, the film tells a story of transformation and endurance, through personal histories and the story of the street itself.


From huge extended families living together in a single street to the story of the slum clearances, old ways of life were unraveling and changes were taking place which shaped the lives of millions of British families all over the country.



Factual; History; Documentaries
Yesterday, 10:00-10:30pm


The killing of Martin Luther King. After turning his attention to the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, the civil rights leader was murdered by a mystery assassin, a crime for which James Earl Ray was convicted.




Factual; History; Documentaries


Infamous Assassinations: Lord Mountbatten - Ireland 1979
Yesterday, 10:30-11:00pm


The murder of Lord Mountbatten - the former Viceroy of India and one of the architects of D-Day - by IRA bombers while holidaying with his family in 1979.




Factual; Documentaries


Timeshift: Of Ice and Men
BBC4, 11:20pm-12:20am



Time Shift reveals the history of the frozen continent, finding out why the most inhospitable place on the planet has exerted such a powerful hold on the imagination of explorers, scientists, writers and photographers.


Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest place on earth. Only a handful of people have experienced its desolate beauty, with the first explorers setting foot here barely a hundred years ago.


From the logbooks of Captain Cook to the diaries of Scott and Shackleton, from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner to HP Lovecraft, it is a film about real and imaginary tales of adventure, romance and tragedy that have played out against a stark white backdrop.


We relive the race to the Pole and the 'Heroic Age' of Antarctic exploration, and find out what it takes to survive the cold and the perils of 'polar madness'. We see how Herbert Ponting's photographs of the Scott expedition helped define our image of the continent and find out why the continent witnessed a remarkable thaw in Russian and American relations at the height of the Cold War.


We also look at the intriguing story of who actually owns Antarctica and how science is helping us re-imagine a frozen wasteland as something far more precious.





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Thursday 7th June

Factual; Travel; Documentaries


Britain's Lost Routes with Griff Rhys Jones
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/4, Thames Barge



Put Griff Rhys Jones on a sailing boat and he’s a happy man, so this second nostalgic journey suits him a treat. The idea is to re-create the journey of the 19th-century Thames sailing barges from Essex to the London docks. 


He does so in a “stacky” called Dawn, a boat designed to carry haystacks. It’s a gentle but seductive journey full of odd nuggets of knowledge (they used root veg for ballast) and a seascape of shallows, creeks and sandbanks. Incidental pleasures include a sweet home movie of a young Griff in yellow jumper at the tiller of the family boat, and a lesson in how to make plum duff. 



Factual; Documentaries


The London Markets


Behind the scenes of the capital's prime wholesale horticultural market. Once, the fruit and veg trade was a closed world dominated by street vendors selling from the back of barrows. But then London changed, as immigration brought new cultures - and more exotic fruit and vegetables became available. This documentary meets some of the vendors to hear about how life has changed at New Spitalfields over the decades, before and after 1991, when the market moved from the City to its current 31-acre location in east London.




Documentaries


The House the 50s Built
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4



Professor Brendan Walker begins his exploration of the inventions that transformed drab post-war Britain into a Technicolor-drenched world of the future in the kitchen.


The 1950s housing revolution replaced free-standing units, mangles and larders with fitted units, twin tubs, food processors and refrigerators.


The programme hears from people who lived through the decade, including Maureen Lipman and Fay Weldon, as well as designers such as Wayne and Geraldine Hemingway, and also Kevin McCloud.


BBC4, 11:40pm-12:40am, Act Three: at Work and Play


Lucy Worsley explores the lives of some of the most remarkable women of the age, including writers, actresses, travellers and scientists.


Against a backdrop of religious and political turmoil, the rise of print culture, the rapid growth of London, the burgeoning scientific revolution and the country's flourishing trading empire, she meets a host of female mavericks who took advantage of the extraordinary changes afoot to challenge the traditional male bastions of society.


Women like Nell Gwyn, the most famous of a new generation of actresses; Aphra Behn, the first professional female writer; and Christian Davies, who disguised herself as a man to fight as a soldier - all of them gained notoriety and celebrity, challenging the inequalities of the age. As Lucy discovers, these women's attitudes, ambitions and achievements were surprisingly modern.





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Friday 8th June

Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm



Reporter Ramita Navai and director Talya Tibbon travel to Central America to investigate the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of young Honduran women. They discover that many of them have been enticed to travel to Mexico with the promise of jobs but end up trafficked to brothels and forced to work in the sex industry.


Those fighting to save the missing girls say the official incompetence and corruption that allows the traffickers to operate has to end. There are some people working to achieve that, but they need help if they are to make a real difference.


BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/8, The Norman Yoke


Michael Wood's history of Britain reaches the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest, asking what life was like for the Anglo-Saxon peasantry in the decades following 1066. To find out he joins the excavation of a castle at Mount Bures, Essex, and a community dig in the Suffolk village of Lord Melford. Moving on, he looks at the beginnings of trade and industry in Bristol, Wales and the Black Country, explores the battle for rights enshrined in the Magna Carta and considers how the nation was affected by the Barons' War and Scottish War of Independence.




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Wednesday 23 May 2012

Off-air recordings for week 26th May - 1st June 2012

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


*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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Saturday 26th May 2012
 
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History
 
A Picture of London
BBC2, 9:15-10:15pm
 
From its early years until the present day, London has provided powerful, emotional inspiration to artists.  This documentary evokes the city as seen by painters, photographers, film-makers and writers through the ages; the perspectives of Dickens, Hogarth, Turner, Virginia Wolfe, Monet and Alfred Hitchcock alongside those of contemporary Londoners who tread the streets of the city every day.
 
All these people have found beauty and inspiration in London's dirt and grime.  Architects and social engineers have strived to organise London, but painters, writers and many more have revelled in its labyrinthine unruliness.  This is the story of a city that tried to impose order on its streets, but actually discovered time after time that its true character lay in an unplanned, chaotic nature.


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Monday 28th May 2012
 
Documentaries
 
Dispatches: The Real Mr and Mrs Assad
Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm
 
Channel 4 Dispatches reveals a portrait of a golden couple who have become global hate figures. The programme shows intimate footage of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his wife Asma that helps explain why the West bought the idea they were true modernisers.


When Bashar took the reins of power after his father's death in 2000, the West was drawn into a hope and belief that Syria would be a new force for change in the Middle East. The Assads were seen as a glamorous couple with modern Western morals and values; he was hailed a reformer, she was the 'Rose of the Desert'.

Key leaders and figures in the West welcomed the young couple, convinced that the softly spoken London-trained ophthalmologist and his beautiful British-born former investment banker wife would bring reform and modernisation to a country that had been run by an iron-fisted dictator for nearly 30 years.

But it seems the West was duped. Instead of a transparent and progressive leadership, what has emerged during a year-long bloody uprising is evidence of the regime's gross systematic human rights abuses, including widespread killings and torture, while the Assads look on.

Channel 4 Dispatches investigates the extent of the Assad family's culpability and the chains of command that link the President and select inner circle to the brutal crackdown.


News

Panorama - Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm

With just days to go before the kick-off of the Euro 2012 championships, Panorama reveals shocking new evidence of racist violence and anti-semitism at the heart of Polish and Ukrainian football and asks whether tournament organiser UEFA should have chosen both nations to host the prestigious event.


Reporter Chris Rogers witnesses a group of Asian fans being attacked on the terraces of a Ukrainian premier league match and hears anti-Semitic chanting at games in Poland. And with exclusive access to a far right group in Ukraine which recruits and trains football hooligans to attack foreigners, Panorama asks: how safe will travelling football teams and their supporters be at this summer's European festival of football?


 
Factual; Documentaries
 
Afghanistan: The Great Game - A Personal View by Rory Stewart
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2
 
How control of Afghanistan was seen by Victorian Britain as key to the security of India.



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Tuesday 29th May 2012
 
Factual; History; Documentaries
 
Bristol on Film
BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 1/3
 
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.



Factual; Documentaries

Harold Baim's Britain on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/3
 
A record of Britain and its people as seen through the lens of film-maker Harold Baim. Extracts from Baim's archive of bright and shiny cinema shorts from the 1940s to 1980s reveal a world that has gone forever.



Factual; History; Documentaries

Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls
BBC4, 9:00-10.00pm, 2/3, Act Two: At Home
 
Lucy Worsley explores the ordinary as well as the extraordinary lives of women in the home. This was an age when respectable women were defined by their marital status as maids, wives or widows. If they fell outside these categories they were in danger of being labelled whores or, at worst, witches.


While history has left many women voiceless over the centuries, Lucy discovers that in the Restoration a surprising number of women were beginning to question their roles in relationship to their husbands, their position in the home, their attitudes to sex and, most importantly, the expectation to produce children.

Meeting a host of experts and experiencing what life was like behind closed doors, Lucy explores whether their lives changed for better or worse during the second half of the 17th century.


Documentaries

Nature's Fury - Monsoon
ITV1, 11:05pm-12:05am

Film-maker and adventurer Chris Terrill follows the Asian monsoon across India, witnessing for himself its impact on a wide variety of people, from farmers to philosophers. His dramatic and dangerous journey ends in Mumbai, the subcontinent's biggest city - where he finally pushes his luck too far.



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Wednesday 30th May 2012
 
Factual; Documentaries
 
Afghanistan: The Great Game - A Personal View by Rory Stewart
BBC 2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/2
 
In episode two Rory Stewart tells the story of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the twentieth century, and it's parallels with the American-led coalition's intervention today. He explains, that quite contrary to popular understanding, the Soviets were reluctant invaders who agonized over the risks of intervention, but despite all these misgivings, they were sucked into Afghanistan.

At first they thought it would take them a matter of months, but eight years later, when they departed, they had gained nothing but humiliation and horror. In this film Rory Stewart meets the soldiers and Generals on both sides, and he meets the CIA spies who covertly funded the Afghans to the tune of nine billions dollars. And he explains the bloody and tragic aftermath of this invasion - civil war, the rise of the Taliban, and the US-led invasion following the World Trade Centre attack.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

Evidently... John Cooper Clarke
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm

Evidently… John Cooper Clarke records and celebrates the life and works of Punk Poet John Cooper Clarke; which presents his life as a poet, a comedian, a recording artist and reveals how he remains a significant influence on contemporary culture, spanning four decades.  With a bevy of household names from a the worlds of stand-up comedy, lyricists, rock stars and cultural commentators paying homage to him, the film reveals Salford-born poet John Cooper Clarke as a dynamic force who remains as relevant today as he ever was, as subsequent generations cite him as a significant influence on their lives, careers and styles.

From Bill Bailey to Plan B, Steve Coogan to Kate Nash and Arctic Monkeys front man Alex Turner to cultural commentators such as Miranda Sawyer and Paul Morley, Evidently… John Cooper Clarke reveals the life behind one of Britain's sharpest and most witty poets - a national treasure.

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Thursday 31st May 2012
 
Documentaries
 
Britain's Lost Routes with Griff Rhys Jones
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/4, Royal Progress
 
The Welsh actor sets out on a journey to discover the most influential pathways in the nation's history. He begins by retracing Queen Elizabeth I's route through the Cotswolds and into the West Country, recreating the baggage train the monarch took with her, sampling Elizabethan forms of transport and visiting some of the castles and stately homes she stopped at along the way.
 
 
Documentaries
 
Married to the Moonies
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
 
With unprecedented access this revealing film takes viewers inside the little known world of the Unification Church, commonly known to outsiders as the Moonies. Married to the Moonies follows three British youngsters as they travel to Korea to be blessed by their messiah, Reverend Moon, at one of the movement's controversial mass weddings.

The three undertake a condensed courtship - meeting and making plans for the future with a person they hardly know. Twenty-two-year-old psychology student Elisa has decided to make her own wedding dress for the big day. Twenty one year old Reamonn has been matched with a girl from Argentina he hasn't even met. The cameras follow him to the airport as he meets his future bride for the first time.  And 20-year-old Naomi from south London is matched with her future husband just days before the ceremony.

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Friday 1st June 2012
 
News, Documentaries
 
Unreported World: My Week with the Gunmen
Channel 4, 7.30-7:55pm
 
Six months after its revolution, Libya is still riven by factionalism, militias and violence, as the armed groups who overthrew Colonel Gaddafi cling to territory and power.


Tripoli's streets are ruled by the gun. The police have tried to remove roadblocks manned by militiamen and have been driven off in a hail of gunfire.

Reporter Peter Oborne and director Richard Cookson talk to fighters from the powerful Zintan militia who have controlled the country's main airport since they seized it from Gaddafi forces. They've been involved in tense negotiations with the government about handing it over but the talks appear to have stalled...
 
Factual; History
 
The Great British Story: A People's History
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2 - Britannia and 2/8 - Tribes to Nations
 
The roots of Britain; from the end of the Romans to the coming of the Anglo Saxons.
 
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Tuesday 15 May 2012

Off-air Recordings for week 19-25 May 2012


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


*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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Saturday 19th May 2012

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

Off By Heart Shakespeare
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

William Shakespeare is hardly a name that you would expect to thrill Britain's teenagers, but over the last year thousands have taken part in a nationwide competition to learn some of his greatest speeches off by heart.

Now, nine finalists, aged between 13 and 15, and from all over the United Kingdom, are off to Stratford-upon-Avon to take part in a life changing series of workshops with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Over a single week, they learn how to perform some of Shakespeare's greatest soliloquies from Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Hamlet, before taking part in a dramatically different and closely fought grand final, hosted by Jeremy Paxman, to find the BBC Shakespeare Schools Champion.


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Sunday 20th May 2012

Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries

Man On Wire
BBC2, 10:00-11:30pm

Documentary based on Philippe Petit's autobiographical book To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers.

In August 1974, French wire-walker Philippe Petit spent nearly an hour walking, dancing, kneeling and lying on a wire which he and his friends had strung in secret between the rooftops of New York's Twin Towers. Six years of intense planning, dreaming and physical training fell into place that morning.

Already an accomplished wire-walker, Petit had caught sight of an article about the planned construction of the Twin Towers while in a dentist's waiting room in 1968, and at that moment an obsession was born. He spent every waking moment since that day plotting the details of his walk (which he called 'le coup') and gathered a team of people around him to assist in the planning.

Petit's preparation was expert, thorough and top secret: he took precise measurements and even aerial photographs to help him construct models of the rigging; learned about the physical effects of the wind on the swaying of the buildings; even created fake ID cards and spied on office workers to plan how best to gain access to the towers without arousing suspicion. On that August morning, his dream was realised.

Using contemporary interviews, archival footage and dramatic reconstructions, the film tells the story of this extraordinary feat, and also of Petit's previous walks between the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, and of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.



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Tuesday 22nd May 2012

Factual; Health and Wellbeing

Great Ormond Street
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/6, Buying Time

This episode focuses on Great Ormond Street's heart transplant team. Every year, the number of donor hearts decreases: safer roads, better intensive care and a society reluctant to donate means fewer hearts and longer waits for children for whom transplant is the last resort. The Berlin Heart is a revolutionary machine that keeps these children alive. However, it's a precarious existence as the machine can only buy them time until the rare gift of a heart is made.


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Wednesday 23rd May 2012

Factual; History; Documentaries

The Fall of Singapore: The Great Betrayal
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:20am

Pearl Harbor and the Fall of Singapore: 70 years ago these huge military disasters shook both Britain and America, but they conceal a secret so shocking it has remained hidden ever since. This landmark film by Paul Elston tells the incredible story of how it was the British who gave the Japanese the knowhow to take out Pearl Harbor and capture Singapore. For 19 years before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, British officers were spying for Japan. Worse still, the Japanese had infiltrated the very heart of the British establishment - through a mole who was a peer of the realm known to Churchill himself.



History; Documentaries

Hitler's Children
BBC 2, 9:00-10:00pm

Adolf Hitler did not have children, but what about the families of Goering, Himmler and Frank, to name a few? What is it like for the descendants of these top Nazi officials to deal with the terrifying legacy of their notorious families? Hitler's Children introduces us to sons, daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews of these infamous men. Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank and godson of Hitler, despises his father so much that he has spent his entire adult life researching, writing and lecturing vehemently against him and the Nazi regime. Bettina Goering, the grandniece of Hitler's second in command, Hermann Goering, lives in voluntary exile in Santa Fe, and together with her brother decided to get sterilized so as to end the Goering name and bloodline. These, and many others, discuss how they have coped with the fact that their last name alone immediately raises images of murder and genocide; each baring, for the first time, the scars that their legacy has left them.


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Thursday 24th May 2012


Documentaries; History

Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History For Girls
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 1/3 - Act One: At Court

In this new three-part series historian and Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces Dr Lucy Worsley immerses herself in the world of Restoration England, exploring the captivating lives of the women of the period. The years after the Civil War and the Restoration of Charles II marked the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the modern age.

These were exciting times for women, some of whom displayed remarkably modern attitudes and ambitions, achieving wealth, celebrity and power in ways that still look outstanding by 21st century standards. But these women also faced a world that was predominantly male, misogynistic and medieval in its outlook. In the first episode Lucy investigates the lives of women at the top: the King’s mistresses at the Royal Court. When Charles and his entourage returned from exile they came back with a host of continental ideas, and as a result some of the women at court rose to prominence as never before, gaining unprecedented political influence and independence.

Amongst a fascinating cast of female characters, the most astonishing were Charles II’s own mistresses: the Royalist, Barbara Villiers, the French spy Louise de Keroualle and the infamous Cockney actress, Nell Gwynn. Lucy examines the lives of these women, discovering how their fortunes were shaped by the Restoration and how their stories reflect the atmosphere of these extraordinary years. As she discovers, these women were key Restoration players, but as mistresses were truly in charge of their own destinies - or simply part of the world’s oldest profession?

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Friday 25th May 2012

News

Unreported World: Cameroon
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm, 6/8

Reporter Evan Williams and director James Brabazon travel to the Central African country of Cameroon to investigate the practice of eating ‘bushmeat' - wild meat hunted in the rainforest. They talk to the medical experts warning that butchering and eating primates including critically endangered gorillas and chimpanzees could trigger a new global pandemic - a new HIV or SARS - by unleashing as-yet unknown viruses. And they meet the British woman battling the trade and looking after the animals orphaned by the slaughter.

Eighty percent of all meat eaten in Cameroon is bushmeat. To understand how the trade works, the Unreported World team travels to the Dja Reserve in the south east of the country. The team passes a constant stream of logging trucks and discovers that the tracks and clearings created by logging companies have opened up the once-impenetrable jungle to bushmeat poachers.

Williams meets some of the wardens trying to combat the poachers. There are only 60 wardens to cover the 2000 square miles of the Dja Reserve. Until 2009 they were funded by the EU. Now they're on their own and it's dangerous work. One warden has already been killed by poachers this year and many have been injured.

Williams and Brabazon walk into the forest with the wardens and meet a group of indigenous Baka people, the so-called pygmies. They tell Williams that people come four or five times a week looking for all sorts of bushmeat and hire locals to go and hunt for them. One warden tells Williams that the local hunters get around 25 to 30 Euros for a chimpanzee.

But the Baka have something even more shocking to reveal. Eating gorilla meat has wiped out one of their neighbouring villages: 25 men, women and children died. There was only one person who survived, and that person didn't eat the meat...

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Wednesday 9 May 2012

Off-air recordings for week 12-18 May 2012


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


*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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Sunday 13th May 2012

Factual; Documentaries

The Lost World of the Seventies
BBC2, 10:00-11:00pm
Michael Cockerell sheds new light on the tragi-comedy of the 1970s by focusing on some of its most controversial characters. With fresh filming and new interviews, along with a treasure trove of rare archive, the film presents the inside story of giant personalities who make today's public figures look sadly dull in comparison.


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Monday 14th May 2012

Factual; History; Documentaries

The 70s
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 4/4, The Winner Takes It All: 77-79

Factual

56 Up
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3

56 Up, the latest instalment of ITV’s landmark documentary series returns to visit the people whose lives have been followed since they were seven and sees more of the original line-up taking part than ever before. The original 7 Up was broadcast in 1964 as a one-off World in Action Special featuring children who were selected from different backgrounds and social spheres to talk about their hopes and dreams for the future.

As members of the generation who would be running the country by the year 2000, what did they think they would become? Inspired by World in Action founder editor Tim Hewat’s passionate interest in both the Jesuit saying: “Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man,” and the rigid class system of 1960s Britain, 7 Up set out to discover whether or not the children’s lives were pre-determined by their background. The result was ground-breaking television and the follow-up films have won an array of awards. Director Michael Apted, who has since moved to Hollywood to direct films including Gorky Park, The Coal Miner’s Daughter, The World Is Not Enough, The Chronicles of Narnia and Gorillas in the Mist, has returned every seven years to chart the children’s progress through life.

Over the past six decades, the series has documented the group as they have become adults and entered middle-age, dealing with everything life has thrown at them in between. Now the series is back to discover what has happened to the group over the last seven years. And one of the original characters has decided to re-join the series after leaving almost 30 years ago. So where are they now?...

Documentaries

Dispatches: Watching The Detectives
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm

How safe are your secrets? Channel 4 Dispatches reveals how easy it is to buy our most personal and confidential information.

In a year-long undercover investigation, private detectives sell us access to health and criminal records, mobile phone bills and bank accounts. The programme discovers the extent of the black market in personal data and reveals how supposedly secure databases are open to exploitation.



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Tuesday 15th May 2012

Factual; Health and Wellbeing

Great Ormond Street
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/6, A Chance At Life

An intimate portrait of two surgeons in Great Ormond Street's General Surgery unit. Navigating between ground-breaking success and devastating failure, they must balance the risk of surgery against the chance of success. Treating children with extraordinarily complex conditions, some of whom are old enough to be involved in the decision making, this film follows the surgeons, patients and their families as they embark on a journey of preparation towards their operation and into the unknown.



Factual; Life Stories; Reality

The Estate
BBC1, 11:40pm-12:10am, 8/8

Martin receives some shattering news from Emma, and Kelly Ann must make a big decision. Plus single mum Emma comes out fighting after her housing benefit is cut off.


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Wednesday 16th  May 2012

Factual; Arts, Culture and Media; History; Documentaries

Roundhead or Cavalier: Which One Are You?
BBC4, 1:00-2:00am

In the middle of the 17th century, Britain was devastated by a civil war that divided the nation into two tribes - the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. In this programme, celebrities and historians reveal that modern Britain is still defined by the battle between the two tribes. The Cavaliers represent a Britain of panache, pleasure and individuality. They are confronted by the Roundheads, who stand for modesty, discipline, equality and state intervention. The ideas which emerged 350 years ago shaped our democracy, civil liberties and constitution. They also create a cultural divide that influences how we live, what we wear and even what we eat and drink. Individuals usually identify with one tribe or the other, but sometimes they need some elements of the enemy's identity - David Cameron seeks a dash of the down-to-earth Roundhead, while Ed Miliband looks for some Cavalier charisma.


Factual

Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

In Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest, Felicity Kendal discovers the story of India’s long love affair with Shakespeare – from the first days of Empire to Bollywood and beyond. The film follows Felicity as she travels across India, the land of her childhood and the place where she took her first steps on stage as a young actress in her parents’ theatre company, Shakespeareana.

She explores the story of India’s enduring love for Shakespeare – a story in which her own family have played an important part. As her investigation takes her from bustling cities to rural villages, from palaces to playgrounds, Felicity discovers the surprising scale of Shakespeare’s influence on Indian culture.

She learns how his works have made the transition from symbols of Empire to become an inspiration for a new generation of artists, making Shakespeare an iconic figure in a country miles from the land of his birth.

Factual; Arts, Culture and Media; History; Documentaries

Henry VIII: Patron or Plunderer?
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/2

King Henry VIII had a fascinating and enlightening relationship with art. He came to the throne as the Renaissance swept across Europe, yet England's new king never lost sight of the medieval chivalry of his forefathers.

In the first of a two-part documentary, architectural historian Jonathan Foyle looks at the palaces, tapestries, music and paintings created in Henry's name and questions whether the art he commissioned compensates for the religious treasures he would come to destroy.


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Friday 18th May 2012

News

Unreported World - Ukraine: The Teenagers Who Live Underground
Channel 4, 7:30-7.55pm

UNICEF estimates that there may be as many as 100,000 street children in Ukraine. Marcel Theroux and Suemay Oram go underground in Kiev to meet some and find out what their life is like. Ukraine has invested billions in infrastructure projects for the 2012 European football championships. While the fans will enjoy the facilities, most of them won't know that living around them - and beneath their feet under the country's cities - are thousands of young people left on their own to survive dangerous, subterranean lives. 

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, years of economic hardship have hurt Ukraine. The result has been a lost generation of teenagers who have run away from broken families, alcoholism and abuse. They suffer awful living conditions and embarrass the Ukrainian government, which in June will host the European Championships as part of its efforts to project a modern, European image with luxury shops and a thriving culture. Many of the teenagers inject drugs or sell sex, and face serious health risks including syphilis, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. In some cities, close to 20 per cent of youngsters living on the streets who were tested were HIV positive.

Theroux and Oram journey underground through pitch-black basements and passageways under the streets of Kiev. Their guides are a group young people who have made their home at the end of a warren of dark corridors. Outside, the temperature is below minus 20 degrees. Underneath the city's Soviet apartment buildings, hot water pipes are helping keep the street children alive. The team finds 13 who have set up home together, surrounded by mounds of rubbish, which indicate they've been living rough for some time. They've been sniffing glue to take away the feelings of cold and hunger, and the effects are starting to become obvious. Longer-term use causes brain damage.

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Wednesday 2 May 2012

Off-air recordings for week 5-11 May 2012

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


*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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Saturday 5th May 2012
 
Documentaries

Asian Weddings: Something Gold, Nothing Borrowed, Everything New
BBC Radio 4, 10:30-11:00am


Big fat gypsy weddings might have hit the headlines, but the traditional British Asian wedding has always been big. Often including several separate ceremonies and events spread over a week or more, the cost of the average Asian wedding in the UK is frequently well over £30,000. With the significance of marriage or 'shaadi' being huge in south Asian culture, weddings are a serious business. From the lavish designer outfits and the elaborate cakes to the grand stages where the bride and groom sit on their thrones, complete with a lighting and sound system to rival a TV talent show, this is an industry worth a reported £300 million a year in the UK alone.

Yasmeen Khan explores the glamorous world of British Asian weddings. She takes in an Asian wedding exhibition in the UK, meeting the clothes designers, wedding planners, toastmasters, food suppliers, chefs, videographers and 'yellow gold' jewellers making their fortunes as the second and third generation tie the knot, all of them keen to help the families show off their wealth. She learns about the different cultural aspects of a Muslim, Sikh and Hindu wedding. She visits a couple's big day and explore the meaning behind cultural traditions, such as the confiscating of the groom's shoes by the bride's sisters and cousins - finding out what he must do to get them back.

Yasmeen also delves into the politics of the guest list at an Asian wedding, many of which are huge affairs with hundreds and sometimes thousands of guests! And she discovers just how much family relations are tested as an increasing number of couples pay for something that has traditionally been paid for by the bride's family.


Factual; Crime and Justice; Documentaries

The Bishop and the Prisoner

BBC Radio 4, 10:30-11:00pm, 1/3


In this three part series the BBC is given a rare degree of access to prisons as it accompanies the Rt Rev James Jones, the Church of England's "Bishop for prisons," into the country's jails. Conversations with prisoners - voices rarely heard on radio - are the centrepieces of these programmes, but the Bishop also talks to prison staff, politicians and opinion-formers about what prison should be for, how prisoners can be helped to become useful citizens and whether community sentences can ever win the public's confidence as a viable alternative to prison.

In this first programme, James Jones visits Liverpool, High Down and Forest Bank prisons. He witnesses the "processing" of inmates as they go through prison reception (or "The Churn" ) and gets out of the way of officers on the walkways responding to alarms that are always sounding. He measures a cell (12 paces by 9). He talks to prisoners - first-timers, old hands, self-harmers - about why they are there. Governors and prison officers tell him how they seek to manage inmates' routines and behaviour, and about the importance of looking out for themselves - when two staff can be responsible for a wing holding sixty prisoners, it doesn't do to let your guard down.

The prison population is at record levels, having almost doubled in the last twenty years. The Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke says he doesn't understand how it has been allowed to get so big, and lambasts attempts of previous Governments to cut crime by giving longer sentences as "pathetic". He tells the Bishop that his aim is to reduce the re-offending rate. Yes, it will help his department's bottom line, but it's common sense too.

How to cut re-offending is the million dollar question. Prisoners, governors and commentators seem to agree that an offender only stops committing crimes when he decides he's had enough; as one said, "I've got too old for it - my heart isn't in it anymore." The deprivation of liberty, courses in thinking skills and literacy don't seem to work as effectively as the simple passage of time.

If prison doesn't reduce re-offending, does that mean it doesn't work?

Prison is also there to punish - though some say it doesn't do that well enough.

In one obvious sense prison is effective; while prisoners are locked away from society, they can't commit crime on the outside. But if prison is to mend the prisoner as well as incarcerate him, it must do more - and that is the focus of the next programme.



 
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Sunday 6th May 2012
 
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Person from Porlock
BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm

When the poet Coleridge failed to complete his 'dream poem' Kubla Khan, he laid the blame on a 'person from Porlock' who had called to see him on business, thereby fatally interrupting his writing.

'The Person from Porlock' has come to represent anything that interrupts the creative process, and he has inspired a number of poems in his own right, from writers as diverse as Stevie Smith and R S Thomas.

Paul Farley travels to Porlock in Somerset in search of Coleridge's mysterious visitor and, in the company of Tim Liardet, Hester Jones and Tom Mayberry, contemplates a number of poetic interruptions - both obstructive and curiously inspirational.
 
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Monday 7th May 2012
 
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries; History

The King and the Playwright: a Jacobean History
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3, Legacy


 Factual

Britain Beware
ITV1, 10:15-11:15pm


Adrian Edmondson delves into the wonderful archives of the Central Office of Information, the government department responsible for making public information films, which is scheduled to close this month.

He takes us on a journey through the mini-movies and TV ads that for nearly 70 years have warned us of all kinds of dangers, from road safety to nuclear fallout. They have great nostalgia value for each generation, whether it is Charlie the Cat warning us of the dangers of falling into water, or Jimmy Savile advising us to ‘clunk click every trip’.

These influential films have helped shape attitudes and change the nation’s behaviour. Some are long-form masterpieces of black and white drama with a filmic feel, whilst others are shot like short glossy adverts. Some used humour to great effect, others left children quaking in their boots. The tone was crucial as Ade explains “For over half a century, the Central Office of Information made films alerting us to the dangers of the world. But the images they used had to avoid being overly shocking while at the same time driving home some potentially terrifying messages.”

Ade unearths some nostalgic gems and hidden treasures that provide a potted social history of Britain. From “Stranger Danger’ and ‘The Green Cross Code’ in the seventies, to eighties themes such as the dangers of drink-driving, playing with fireworks and sexually transmitted diseases. As he acknowledges “Of all the developed countries, Britain’s £20 million pound campaign was one of the earliest and perhaps partly due to this our HIV rates are still amongst the lowest in the world.”

Adrian will also come across the well-known figures that have given their time to keep us safe including Kevin Keegan, Donald Pleasance, Michael Aspel, Alvin Stardust and Ronnie Barker, alongside the characters iconic to our childhood such as Tufty the Squirrel and Joe & Petunia, the fat calamitous tourists.

Britain Beware serves up a quirky social history laced with nostalgia to mark the end of a great British institution that did its best to protect us from ourselves.



 
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Tuesday 8th May 2012
 
Factual; Health and Wellbeing

Great Ormond Street
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/6, A Difficult Line

A look at Great Ormond Street Hospital's oncology department, following doctors as they face challenging ethical decisions about treating children with some of the rarest and most complex cancers in the country. Doctors must decide how to act in the best interest of their patients whilst handling relationships with the children's families.
 


Factual; Life Stories; Reality

The Estate
BBC1, 11:40pm-12:10am

Coleraine residents battle their way through a tough economic year in Ballysally. Things are going bump in the night at Kyle's flat; Louise is going to be a granny; and Jim's back on the booze, with disastrous consequences.
 
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Thursday 10th May 2012
 
Arts, Culture and the Media

The Library Returns
BBC Radio 4, 11:30am-12:05pm

Just as the news for libraries never seemed worse - with a shortage of users, imminent closures and cuts to funding - a new breed of libraries, in Britain and abroad and designed by architects for the 21st century, is rising from the ashes. This programme, presented by Jonathan Glancey, looks at the ways in which the design and function of the library is being re-invented in the USA, Europe and the UK. The programme visits Seattle, Delft , Stuttgart and the huge emerging new library in Birmingham, due for completion next year.

 
Documentaries; Science and Nature

World's Scariest... Weather
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/4

Some of the most violent and dangerous weather ever caught on camera, from heavy storms to flash floods and world-shaking events. Footage shows someone being lifted into the air by a tornado that is causing devastation in America, and a heatwave leads to terrifying wildfires in Russia. A mother with three kids in the back of her car is plunged into darkness as a dust storm hits Phoenix, Arizona, and a British teacher watches as the tsunami of March 2011 washes away his home in northern Japan.


Factual; Arts, Culture and Media; Travel

Shakespeare in Italy
BBC2, 2/2, Land of Fortune

Francesco da Mosto concludes his tour of the country beginning with a visit to Venice, where he meets actor Ciaran Hinds to discuss why the Bard chose the city as the setting for The Merchant of Venice. The historian is then joined by Mark Rylance in Rome as they explore how the playwright used the Italian capital for the plots of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra to avoid Elizabethan censors. Finally, on the island of Stromboli, off the northern coast of Sicily, Francesco uncovers the location for Shakespeare's late masterpiece - The Tempest.

 
Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

Do We Really Need The Moon?
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm


The Moon is such a familiar presence in the sky that most of us take it for granted. But what if it wasn't where it is now? How would that affect life on Earth?

Space scientist and lunar fanatic Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock explores our intimate relationship with the Moon. Besides orchestrating the tides, the moon dictates the length of a day, the rhythm of the seasons and the very stability of our planet.

Yet the Moon is always on the move. In the past it was closer to Earth and in the future it'll be farther away. That it is now perfectly placed to sustain life is pure luck, a cosmic coincidence. Using computer graphics to summon up great tides and set the Earth spinning on its side, Maggie Aderin-Pocock implores us to look at the Moon afresh: to see it not as an inert rock, but as a key player in the story of our planet, past, present and future.

 
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Friday 11th May 2012

Documentaries; Science and Technology

The Two Thousand Year Old Computer
BBC4, 3:30-4:30am


Imagine craftsmen built a bronze machine, conceived by Archimedes more than 2,000 years ago, for looking into the future. The astonishing thing is, it exists, in an Athens museum. Three fragments of a corroded bronze mechanism were found on the seabed in 1900 and it was such a complex device that it has taken this long to figure out what it is.

In this breathtaking documentary, we join a team of mathematicians, historians and other experts trying to solve the puzzle and meet the eccentric British engineer who has built his own version of Archimedes’s astrolabe and lunar calendar. It’s an extraordinary story, superbly told.

The efforts of an international team of scientists to solve the mysteries of the Antikythera Mechanism. The 2,000-year-old device was recovered from a Roman shipwreck off the southern coast of Greece in 1901, and is believed to be the world's oldest computer. The object appears to be designed to predict solar eclipses, and according to recent findings, calculate the timing of the ancient Olympics.

 
Documentaries

The Trouble with Moody Teens
BBC Radio 4, 11:00-11:30pm

Miranda Sawyer explores how some teenagers are suffering with clinical depression, a condition that is difficult to diagnose and often overlooked as typical adolescent behaviour. She investigates whether social networking and the current economic climate are adding to the problem, and reveals what treatment is available, including that of the support provided by such charities as Young Minds.

 
News

Unreported World - Congo, Magic, Gangs and Wrestlers
Channel 4Wrestlers are superstars in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this vast and troubled country, wrestling is a passion, allowing fans to forget the poverty, violence and ongoing civil war for the duration of a bout.

Contests are televised and reported on the sports pages and attract thousands of fans.

In the capital, Kinshasa, Unreported World reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Wael Dabbous find some of the superstars of the sport practising 'black magic', and uncover allegations that many fighters are involved in gang violence and political intimidation.

Like other countries where wrestling is popular, there's a tradition in Congo of fighters wearing masks and customised costumes.

But alongside the theatrics common to wrestling elsewhere, Congo's version has incorporated the belief in black magic, or fetishe, which is genuinely feared by many.

The film begins with an amazing scene. Rhodes and Dabbous visit a wrestling match in Kinshasa to watch Congo's champion wrestler, Nanga Steve, taking on Super Angaluma, a fetishe wrestler famed for using black magic to defeat his opponents.

The street bout is held in a ring surrounded by hundreds of spectators, many of them young men. To the crowd's delight Super Angaluma uses fetishe to try and defeat Nanga Steve, sacrificing a chicken to help him unlock supernatural powers.

Despite this, in a classic denouement, good triumphs over evil and Nanga Steve is victorious.

In this city of eight million people - the third largest in Africa - Steve and the other star wrestlers aren't just celebrities: they're figures of power and influence.

Steve tells Rhodes that some wrestlers are major forces in gangs called 'Kuluna' that are terrorising the city. While some fighters like him are celebrities, others struggle to make a living, which he says explains the attraction of the gangs., 7:30-7:55pm


 
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