Thursday 28 June 2012

Off-air recordings for week 30 June - 6 July 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 30th June


Drama


The Hollow Crown: Richard II
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4 - Richard II

The Hollow Crown brings together four filmed adaptations of Shakespeare's History Plays: Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 & 2 and Henry V.


Beginning in the year 1399, this continuous story of monarchy captures 16 years of dynastic and political power play, as Kings, their families and followers are threatened by rebellion and conflict.


'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.' Henry IV.


The story takes us from the Royal Court at Westminster to battlefields in England and France. Each of these rich films is woven with the finest of Shakespeare’s poetry and are filmed using the architecture and landscape of the period.


King Richard is called upon to settle a dispute between his cousin Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray. Richard calls for a duel, but then halts it just before swords clash. Both men are banished from the realm.


Richard visits John of Gaunt, Bolingbroke’s father, who, in the throes of death, reprimands the King. After seizing Gaunt’s money and lands, Richard leaves for wars against the rebels in Ireland. Bolingbroke returns to claim back his inheritance. Supported by his allies, Northumberland and the Duke of York, Bolingbroke takes Richard prisoner and lays claim to the throne.


Cast: Richard II is played by Ben Whishaw, Bolingbroke by Rory Kinnear, Mowbray by James Purefoy, John of Gaunt by Patrick Stewart, Northumberland by David Morrissey and Duke of York by David Suchet.




Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries


Derek Jacobi on Richard II: Shakespeare Uncovered
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:20am



Shakespeare Uncovered: Derek Jacobi looks at Richard II and returns to a role he played 30 years ago. He helps actors at the Globe with aspects of the play, reveals why it might have cost Shakespeare his life, and shares some of the extraordinary political parallels within the play that still resonate today.


Derek first played Richard II for the BBC in 1978 - now 34 years later Ben Whishaw is starring in a new BBC film of the play. Derek spans those dates and uncovers what is so special about this play. Although written entirely 'in verse', it is nonetheless one of the most resonant and relevant of all of Shakespeare's plays. Its understanding of power and its inevitable tendency to corrupt and distort the truth are continually repeated in current affairs.


Derek visits Shakespeare's Globe and shares his thoughts with actors rehearsing the play - but he also looks at his own performance and those of other actors who have over the last 30 years tried this taxing role. Richard is both a king and a man who knows he is acting the role of a king. It makes him an extraordinary character for any actor to play. But was this play written by the actor William Shakespeare? Derek is one of those who doubt that and he visits the ancestral home of the man he thinks might very well be the true author of 'Shakespeare's' plays.


Richard II is a politically sensitive play, with a monarch having the crown taken from them. Derek goes on to tell of the attempted coup against Queen Elizabeth led by the Earl of Essex, and how that involved Shakespeare's company of actors. The Earl persuaded them to put on the play to encourage his 'plotters' and it could have cost Shakespeare his life.


With contributions from both the director and leading actor - Rupert Goold and Ben Whishaw - and clips from the new film, Derek uncovers the continuing resonance of this extraordinary play.




Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; History; Documentaries


Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings
BBC4, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/3 - Ruling by the Book



Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of illuminated manuscripts that were custom-made for kings and explores the medieval world they reveal. She begins her journey with the first Anglo-Saxon rulers to create a united England, encountering books in the British Library's Royal manuscripts collection which are over a thousand years old and a royal family tree which is five metres long.


Janina finds out about a king who had a reputation for chasing nuns and reads a book created as a wedding gift for a ten-year-old prince. She roams from Westminster Abbey to other ancient English spiritual sites such as Winchester, St Albans and Malmesbury, and sees for herself how animal skins can be transformed into the finest vellum.




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Sunday 1st May


Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment

BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 3/4 - The Magical Forest

Secrets of Our Living Planet showcases the incredible ecosystems that make life on Earth possible. Using beautifully shot scenes in the wild, Chris Packham reveals the hidden wonder of the creatures that we share the planet with, and the intricate, clever and bizarre connections between the species, without which life just could not survive.

Discover previously unknown relationships, like why a tiger needs a crab, or why a gecko needs a giraffe. Each week Chris visits one of our planet's most vital and spectacular habitats and dissects it to reveal the secrets of how our living planet works.

In this episode, Chris travels to North America to witness the annual miracle of the temperate forest: the destruction of its ecosystem in winter, followed by it rebuilding itself in spring. Chris marvels at the exquisite timing that is necessary in two particularly wonderful stories - the story of how the Canada lynx depends for its prey on a caterpillar high up in the canopy, and the story of why the giant trees of the north-west are dependent on bears and salmon.




Factual; Documentaries


Timeshift: Between the Lines - Railways in Fiction and Film
BBC4, 7:00-8:00pm


Novelist Andrew Martin presents a documentary examining how the train and the railways came to shape the work of writers and film-makers.


Lovers parting at the station, runaway carriages and secret assignations in confined compartments - railways have long been a staple of romance, mystery and period drama. But at the beginning of the railway age, locomotives were seen as frightening and unnatural. Wordsworth decried the destruction of the countryside, while Dickens wrote about locomotives as murderous brutes, bent on the destruction of mere humans. Hardly surprising, as he had been involved in a horrific railway accident himself.


Martin traces how trains gradually began to be accepted - Holmes and Watson were frequent passengers - until by the time of The Railway Children they were something to be loved, a symbol of innocence and Englishness. He shows how trains made for unforgettable cinema in The 39 Steps and Brief Encounter, and how when the railways fell out of favour after the 1950s, their plight was highlighted in the films of John Betjeman.


Finally, Martin asks whether, in the 21st century, Britain's railways can still stir and inspire artists.





Factual; Documentaries


India's Hospital Train:  Lifeline Express
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm


The story of a special train, the Lifeline Express. It is known as the Magic Train. With two state-of-the-art operating theatres, recovery rooms, offices and accommodation, each project requires a team of volunteer doctors, surgeons and nurses to give their services for free. For four weeks, cameras follow the Mandsor project as operations are carried out on poor rural people while the train is standing in a station in the middle of India.


Dashrath is going deaf, Bharat can't walk, and baby Shiva was born with a cleft lip. They cannot reach a hospital and they can't afford the operations. The operations change the lives of both patients and doctors. With compelling, dynamic and moving stories, the Magic Train opens a gateway to another India, where 21st-century medicine meets village India.



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Monday 2nd May

Factual; Documentaries

BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/3 - The Suburbs

From the start, suburban London has been captured on film. For some it is a gracious retreat while for others an unwelcome exile. This is a confusing world of tidy semis, old villages and sprawling estates, of commuters, hidden lives and conflict - revealed entirely through archive images.


Documentaries

BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

The day after London won the Olympic bid terrorists attacked the public transport network, killing 52 people and injuring more than 700. Seven years later the eyes of the world are once again focused on the capital.


7/7: One Day in London gathers the testimony of more than 50 people directly affected by the London bombings, exploring the long lasting effects as they reflect on their experiences and how their lives have changed.


After the conclusion of the public inquest in 2011, a multitude of previously untold stories emerged of the bravery, difficulties and horror that people experienced on that day in 2005; many of these have been included in this film as well as testimony from people who have never spoken publically before.


This is an ambitious retelling of the story of what happened on that day, with contributions from commuters, emergency service workers, Transport For London staff and families of victims. With enormous compassion for one another, ordinary people tell extraordinary stories of the day when they were thrown together, and their struggle to cope in the wake of the blasts that shook London.



Factual; Crime and Justice; Documentaries

BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 2/3 - The Pursuit of Liberty


Many of the rights and freedoms we take for granted today were forged during the turbulent 17th and 18th centuries, when courageous men used the law to challenge tyranny and the abuse of power. Harry Potter re-lives the struggles and achievements of these extraordinary figures. They include the barrister who risked assassination and eternal damnation to put the king of England on trial for his crimes against the people; the civil rights activist who was banished to Oliver Cromwell's equivalent of Guantanamo Bay; and the pillar of the establishment whose radical judgement rocked the slave trade, triggering its ultimate abolition. 


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Tuesday 3rd May

Factual; Documentaries

BBC4, 2:30-3:30am

Storyville: documentary which charts the attempts of two people with albinism to follow their dreams in the face of prejudice and fear in Tanzania. Against the backdrop of an escalation in brutal murders of people with albinism, quietly determined 15-year-old Veda still dreams of completing his education. Josephat Torner has dedicated his life to campaigning against the discrimination of his people, confronting communities who may be hiding the murderers. Harry Freeland's film reveals a story of deep-rooted superstition, suffering and incredible strength.


Factual; Families and Relationships; History

BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/5

In this episode, the families are put through the mill as they experience family life during the Interwar years. They experience the highs of the "roaring twenties", followed by the lows of the Great Depression and its catastrophic effect on British economy.


The Taylor family lead a life of leisure in an upper class household, waited on by servants, a chauffeur and a nanny; but the good times are soon brought to an end with the Wall Street Crash.


Living as a working class family, the Meadows start on a high with better pay and working conditions, but are soon forced to resort to desperate measures.


Meanwhile, the Golding family are relieved to be relatively unscathed by the economic downturn and spend the era steadily improving their lot. That is, until Ian Golding is presented with some devastating truths about the 1930s lives his ancestors were forced to lead as Jews living in London's East End.



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Wednesday 4th May

Factual; History; Documentaries

BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 5/6 - Reverdy Road

In 1886 Charles Booth embarked on an ambitious plan to visit every one of London's streets to record the social conditions of residents. His project took him 17 years.


Once he had finished he had constructed a groundbreaking series of maps which recorded the social class and standing of inhabitants. These maps transformed the way Victorians felt about their capital city.


This series takes six archetypal London streets as they are now, discovering how they have fared since Booth's day.


Booth colour coded each street, from yellow for the 'servant keeping classes', down to black for the 'vicious and semi-criminal'. With the aid of maps the series explores why certain streets have been transformed from desperate slums to become some of the most desirable and valuable property in the UK, whilst others have barely changed.


This landmark series features residents past and present, exploring how what happened on the street in the last 125 years continues to shape the lives of those who live there now.


The fifth episode features Reverdy Road, Bermondsey, which has endured as an enclave of working-class respectability. When Booth visited in 1900, he was impressed by the houses, gardens, and by the broad and clean streets.


Older residents recall life on the street during the war, when three houses were bombed, and trips to the hop fields of Kent. They also remember the work of a pioneer of public health, Dr Alfred Salter, who lived in the house on the corner of the street, a house that has been occupied by a doctor since 1880.



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Thursday 5th May

Documentaries

More4, 7:55-9:00pm

The story of The Shard - the colossal glass skyscraper that has transformed London's skyline.


Built against a backdrop of massive public opposition and one of the worst recessions in history, this feat of architectural engineering in the heart of the capital will stand at over 1000 feet - the tallest tower in Western Europe.


Love it or hate it, The Shard is destined to become one of London's most dominant landmarks. The film lifts the lid on the challenges and achievements of an enormous engineering project in a densely populated area of London.


The demanding construction schedule required builders to add a new floor every seven days, and has used 100,000 tonnes of concrete, 11,468 glass panels, a spire made of 500 tonnes of steel and the UK's tallest crane.


On completion, this 1016 foot 'vertical town' will include office space, the highest residential apartments in the UK, a five-star hotel, restaurants and public viewing galleries.


Its construction is the dream of property developer Irvine Sellar, a former fashion-store owner, who appointed world-renowned architect Renzo Piano, who's famous for landmark buildings including Paris's Pompidou Centre and the home of the New York Times.


Filmed over four years, The Tallest Tower: Building the Shard provides exclusive behind-the-scenes access to this architectural journey, and the story of one man's desire to leave a lasting mark on the capital.




History; Documentaries


Storyville: Hitler, Stalin and Mr Jones
BBC4, 9:00-10:20pm



A typically forbidding Storyville tackles a typically tough story. The director is George Carey, a giant of factual TV (he helped create Newsnight and Question Time) who is fascinated by his subject here, a Welsh journalist called Gareth Jones. 

In the 1930s Jones exposed how Stalin’s Five Year Plans caused millions of deaths in the Ukraine and was murdered by Chinese bandits in 1935. “He trespassed into 
a snakepit of intrigue,” observes one contributor, a snakepit the film tries to unravel. 


Sport; Slavery; History; Genetics; Documentaries

4Seven, 11:00pm-12:05am


Why is it that all the athletes that lined up for the men's 100m final at the Beijing Olympics could trace their ancestry back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade?


In this landmark documentary, Olympian Michael Johnson embarks on a personal genealogical and scientific journey in a bid to understand if he and other world-class African American and Caribbean athletes are successful as a result of slavery.


Michael Johnson is a four-time Olympic gold medallist and the finest sprint athlete of his generation. In this remarkable authored film he discovers some disturbing truths about the lives of his enslaved ancestors.


From the mass murder of those on the slave ships to the nightmarish breeding programmes of the plantation owners, Johnson confronts this appalling history.


He speaks to leading voices in the world of sport and science to examine the link between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and genetic selection.


He investigates the role slavery may have played in altering the genomes of their descendants. He speaks to experts whose research has led them to conclude this has contributed to the success of African American and Caribbean sprinters.


Is this part of the explanation of why these athletes are likely to dominate the track at London 2012?



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Tuesday 19 June 2012

Off-air recordings for week 23-29 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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Sunday 24th June 


Drama; Historical; Films

Julius Caesar
BBC4, 8:00-10:30pm


Film version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2012 production of Shakespeare's fast-moving thriller. A vivid story about a struggle for democracy, Julius Caesar is also a love story between two men united by an explosive act of political violence. The setting is a modern African state in which the tyrant Caesar is about to seize power. Cassius persuades Brutus to join the conspirators plotting an assassination. Featuring a distinguished cast of black actors, the film is shot on location and in the RSC's theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.




Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Life Stories

Omnibus: Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man
BBC4, 11:30pm-12:20am


Documentary about the late sci-fi and fantasy writer Ray Bradbury, filmed in Los Angeles and including dramatisations of extracts from his stories.


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Monday 25th June


Factual; Documentaries

London on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/3 East End


The intensity of life in London's East End has attracted film-makers since the camera was first invented. The vast changes in East End life - from the docks and the rag trade to market traders, migrants and wartime upheavals - are revealed entirely through the images they captured on film.




Factual; Documentaries

Storyville: Girl Model
BBC4, 9:00-10:15pm


Storyville: documentary which exposes the shocking supply of ever younger girl models to the Japanese modelling industry. The film follows 13-year-old Nadya from poverty in Siberia to the city of Tokyo and a life as a model. American scout Ashley promises her a lucrative career, but all is not as it seems as Nadya's optimism quickly fades when confronted with the dehumanising culture of life in Japanese casting sessions.




Factual; History; Documentaries

Atlantis: The Evidence - A Timewatch Special
BBC4, 10:15-11:15pm

In this Timewatch special, historian Bettany Hughes unravels one of the most intriguing mysteries of all time. She presents a series of geological, archaeological and historical clues to show that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by a real historical event, the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world.




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Tuesday 26th June

Crime; Documentaries

Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm, Robert Black

The case of paedophile Robert Black, currently serving life in prison for the killings of four children in the 1980s. Professor David Wilson explores Black's past, revealing a shocking history of abuse and repeat offences that had gone unchecked, and listens to recorded interviews that provide an insight into the mind of a killer. The tapes lead Wilson to believe Black is guilty of many more murders, and his investigation points to a possible link between the criminal and two of the UK's longest-running missing child cases.


Comedyl; Entertainment; Discussion and Talk

Turn Back Time - The Family
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/5


The Edwardian era pushes the three modern families to their limits.

There is a rude awakening for the Polo-playing Meadows family, who take on the role of being an Edwardian working-class family and must cope with the impact of poverty on their lives, as they and their two daughters adapt to a new role as breadwinners.

The Taylor family live the lives of their ancestors as an upper-middle-class Edwardian household. Formality and etiquette mean the Taylor family must live very separate lives and mum Adele struggles as her familiar role as wife and working mum is stripped away.

Finally, the Golding family are desperately hanging on to their newly acquired social status as a middle-class family, but for dad Ian it is a chance to put his theories on the benefits of discipline into practice.




Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Ethan Hawke on Macbeth: Shakespeare Uncovered

BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3


Shakespeare Uncovered: Ethan Hawke sets out to prepare himself for the possibility of playing the role of Macbeth by uncovering the true story behind the play, seeing some of the greatest productions and discovering the extraordinary insights into the criminal mind that Shakespeare reveals.

Ethan has played a modern-dress Hamlet, but he is fascinated by the challenge of the truly ancient story of Macbeth. Assisted by historian Justin Champion - who visits the actual Scottish sites of the story on his behalf - Ethan is introduced to Dunsinane where Macbeth supposedly lived and to the history books that distorted the true story and led Shakespeare himself to distort the truth.

Ethan is also helped by actors and performers in his home town of New York as he investigates the 'bloody heart' of this extraordinary character. He also wants to know how important Macbeth's wife is to the whole story and we observe Shakespeare's Globe actors rehearsing and performing scenes from the play. He talks at length to Anthony Sher and his director Greg Doran (recently appointed to take over as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company) about their legendary stage and film production of the play.

Finally, Ethan goes to look at a copy of the First Folio - The Complete Works of Shakespeare, as published in 1623. This priceless book contains the first ever printed version of the play - if Shakespeare's friends had not clubbed together after the writer's death to create this book, then Macbeth and 16 other Shakespeare plays would have been lost forever.

At the end of the film Ethan believes that this extraordinarily brutal and bloody play does have a message of comfort and explains why the mayor of New York chose to quote from it on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the atrocity of 9/11.


Drama; Historical; Films

Macbeth
BBC4, 11:00pm-1:30am


Film version of director Rupert Goold's highly-acclaimed production with Sir Patrick Stewart as Macbeth and Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth, originally staged by Chichester Festival Theatre and later a sell-out hit in the West End and on Broadway.

Shot on location in the mysterious underground world of Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire, the film is set in an undefined and threatening central European world. Immediate and visceral, this is a contemporary presentation of Shakespeare's intense, claustrophobic and bloody drama.

Patrick Stewart won Best Actor and Rupert Goold Best Director in the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for the stage production and both Stewart and Fleetwood were nominated for Tony Awards for their performances.

Director of the play ENRON and the Royal Shakespeare Company's current Romeo and Juliet, Rupert Goold has been described by critic Benedict Nightingale as 'the hottest, most exciting director around', and Macbeth is his debut as a film director.


Documentaries

talhotblond
Channel 4, 11:10pm-12:25am


Talhotblond is the true story (and screen name) of a beautiful teenage vixen who uses internet game rooms to lure men into her cyberspace web.

When she discovers she's been double crossed and lied to by one of her victims, she wants revenge, and unleashes a fantasy online that escalates into real-life murder.

All because of a girl no one ever met in person.

Drawing from exclusive access to internet messages, secret notes and letters, as well as police evidence files and exclusive prison interviews, talhotblond details the horrific results of what can happen when people lie online.


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Wednesday 27th June

Documentaries

The Secret History of Our Streets
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm 4/6 - Portland Road


Charles Booth’s vast 1886 Survey of London ranked each of London's streets according to the class of its residents - including Portland Road in Notting Hill. This week the series reveals how its fortunes have ebbed and flowed over in the last 125 years, leaving it one of the most financially divided streets in Britain.

Today it's the archetypal London banker street, lined with six million pound homes for hedge fund managers. But when Booth visited in 1899 it was the worse slum in London - and still today the top one percent in Britain by income and the bottom five percent live on the same street.

Told through the personal stories of Portland Road’s remarkably diverse range of residents, past and present - including Lords, bankers and slum dwellers - the film tells the story of one of the most divided streets in Britain.


Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Perspectives: Andrew Lloyd-Webber - A Passion for the Pre-Raphaelites

ITV1, 11:35pm-12:30am

The composer discusses his love for the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and invites the cameras into his Hampshire home to show off his collection. He talks about how the artists wanted to shake up Victorian England with their dramatic depictions of themes such as love and death, and is moved to tears by the Pre-Raphaelite art he views on a visit to Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton.


Crime and Punishment; Law; History; Documentaries

The Strange Case of the Law
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - The Pursuit of Liberty

Barrister and historian Harry Potter charts the formation of legal rights and freedoms in the 17th and 18th centuries, many of which still exist today. He explores the case of a lawyer who risked assassination to put the king of England on trial for his crimes against the people, a civil rights activist Oliver Cromwell banished to an offshore prison, and a pillar of the establishment who made a judgement that dealt a blow to the slave trade.

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Thursday 28th June

Documentaries

The Men Who Made Us Fat
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3

With one adult in four now classified as obese, Jacques Peretti sets out to discover why Britain is getting fatter. He examines assumptions about what is and is not healthy and discovers how product marketing can seduce consumers into buying supposedly healthy foods such as muesli and juice - both of which can be high in sugar. He also explores the impact of successive government initiatives and health campaigns, questioning whether things have really changed when high-profile events such as the Olympic Games are sponsored by drink and fast-food companies.


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Friday 29th June

Factual

Simon Schama's Shakespeare
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/2

A season exploring how one man captured so much about what it means to be human

Factual; Lifestyle; Documentaries

The Circus
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm


Running away to join the circus used to be almost every child’s dream, but the reality of having to make new friends in a different school every week, being despised for your traveller lifestyle and having to dangle from a trapeze twice nightly despite the rows of the empty seats doesn’t make it so appealing.

This honest documentary follows the Darnells, descendants of a circus family since the 1800s. Paulo’s Circus is all they know and they obviously love the business. However, times are changing — audiences are dwindling and only one of Kenny Darnell’s three sons is certain he wants to continue the family tradition. One son, if he can get up the courage to tell his dad, is even thinking of leaving the Big Top to live in the outside world.

There’s not a hint of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding finger-pointing or sniggering about this film. Instead it offers a glimpse into a form of entertainment and a lifestyle that may not be around much longer.

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Wednesday 13 June 2012

Off-air recordings for week 16-22 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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Sunday 17th June


Factual; Science and Nature; Environmet; Documentaries

Secrets of Our Living Planet 
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/4 - The Emerald Band


Secrets of Our Living Planet showcases the incredible ecosystems that make life on Earth possible. Using beautifully shot scenes in the wild, Chris reveals the hidden wonder of the creatures that we share the planet with, and the intricate, clever and bizarre connections between the species, without which life just could not survive.


Discover previously unknown relationships, like why a tiger needs a crab; or why a gecko needs a giraffe. Each week Chris visits one of our planet's most vital and spectacular habitats and dissects it, to reveal the secrets of how our living planet works.


In this episode, Chris weaves a spellbinding account of how the very special conditions that exist in the rainforest have allowed vast colourful communities of animals and plants to evolve. And he reveals one particularly extraordinary web of life centred on a tree, the Brazil nut tree. It is one of the mightiest trees in the Amazon but it can only survive thanks to a little rodent called agouti, an orchid and a very unusual bee.





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Monday 18th June


Factual; Pets and Animals; Science and Nature; Documentaries

Natural World: Unnatural History of London
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm


Seals, parakeets and even pelicans that eat pigeons have all made London their home. That's as well as badgers, foxes, scorpions, and pigeons that ride the tube. But even more wonderful are the people who love the exotic wildlife of our capital, from Billingsgate fish porters to Indian Chefs to 'Crayfish Bob', who scours London's canals for Turkish invaders. This is a warm-hearted portrait of the world's greenest capital city and the Londoners who love its secret wildlife.




Factual; Documentaries

Ukraine's Forgotten Children
BBC4, 9:00-10:30pm



Ten times as many children are in institutional care in Ukraine as in England. In this disturbing investigation, film-maker Kate Blewett finds out what a lifetime in the care of the state really means for Ukraine's forgotten children.


Shot over six months in an institute for disabled and abandoned children, the film takes us inside the lives of a handful of children who were abandoned by their parents - with a simple signature - to state care. The institute houses 126 children, of whom all but four still have living parents. The vast majority are what are called 'social orphans' in Ukraine, signed over to institutional care in a society that still clings to the Soviet-era ideal that the state knows best. But what Kate finds is that children of widely varying abilities are warehoused together, leading inevitably to institutionalisation, repetitive behaviour, self-stimulation and self-harm, even amongst those with very minor disabilities.


Lyosha is ten, and has no arms and legs. But with a fighting spirit and lively intelligence, he uses his balance and powerful neck muscles to propel himself around the room, along corridors and even up and down stairs, almost as quickly as those around him with four limbs. He is proud of the fact that he makes his own bed every morning, and will not allow carers to help him do so. Lyosha is just one of a group of boys for whom Nikolai, the institute director, has great ambitions. Nikolai has seen too many of the children he has cared for leave at 18, to be transferred to psychiatric or geriatric homes, labelled as incapacitated and effectively robbed of their human rights and their future. He has gained funding from Russia for a small group home for boys like Lyosha whom he feels have the greatest unrealised potential. Once in this home they will get the education and rehabilitation they need to avoid a future without hope or freedom...





Factual; Travel; Documentaries

A Short Journey Into Tajikistan
BBC4, 10:30-11:15pm



Tajikistan, in central Asia, was once one of the smallest and poorest republics of the USSR. In the last twenty years it has moved from communism to capitalism, from atheism to a rediscovery of Islam.


Reporter Khayrulla Fayz returns to his village to discover what life is like for people there now. He talks to cotton farmers in the fields where he picked cotton as a child, meets migrant workers forced to leave their families to find work in Russia and asks the new entrepreneurs about the challenges of doing business there.


When Khayrulla was a boy he spoke Russian and looked up to Lenin as the father of the nation. He finds out who the new heroes are for the younger generation carving out an identity for this newly-independent country.





Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Turner's Thames
BBC4, 11:15pm-12:15am



In this documentary, the presenter and art critic Matthew Collings explores how Turner, the artist of light, makes light the vehicle of feeling in his work, and how he found inspiration for that feeling in the waters of the River Thames.


JMW Turner is the most famous of English landscape painters. Throughout a lifetime of travel, he returned time and again to paint and draw scenes of the Thames, the lifeblood of London. This documentary reveals the Thames in all its diverse glory, from its beauty in west London, to its heartland in the City of London and its former docks, out to the vast emptiness and drama of the Thames estuary near Margate.


Turner was among the first to pioneer painting directly from nature, turning a boat into a floating studio from which he sketched the Thames. The river and his unique relationship with it had a powerful impact upon his use of materials, as he sought to find an equivalent in paint for the visual surprise and delight he found in the reality of its waters.


By pursuing this ever-changing tale of light, Turner also documented and reflected upon key moments in British history in the early 19th century; the Napoleonic wars, social unrest and the onset of the industrial revolution. His paintings of the river Thames communicate the fears and exultations of the time. 


Turner's greatness as a painter is often attributed to his modern use of colour. Many of his paintings are loved by the British public and regularly celebrated as the nation's greatest art. This film reveals for the first time on television a key inspiration for that modernity and celebrity; a stretch of water of immense importance to the nation in the early 19th century but which today is often taken for granted - the River Thames.



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Tuesday 19th June


Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries

Ocean Giants
BBC2, 1/3 Giant Lives



Ground-breaking documentary granting a unique and privileged access into the magical world of whales and dolphins, uncovering the secrets of their intimate lives as never before.


This episode explores the intimate details of the largest animals that have ever lived on our planet- the great whales. From the balmy waters of the Indian Ocean to the freezing seas of the Arctic, two daring underwater cameramen - Doug Allan, Planet Earth's polar specialist, and Didier Noirot, Cousteau's front-line cameraman - come face-to-face with fighting humpback whales and two-hundred-ton feeding blue whales.


Teaming up with top whale scientists, Giant Lives discovers why southern right whales possess a pair of one-ton testicles, why the arctic bowhead can live to over two hundred years old, and why size truly matters in the world of whales. 





Crime; Criminology; Documentaries

Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story
Channel Five, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 Peter Tobin


The case of Peter Tobin, currently serving life imprisonment for the murder of two young women and a teenage girl in attacks going back to 1991. Professor David Wilson tries to understand how Tobin operated by visiting the scenes of his crimes in Glasgow and Margate - including the very room that 23-year-old student Angelina Kluk was raped and murdered in 2006. Armed with this information, the criminologist goes in search of unsolved murders bearing his hallmarks.




Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Joely Richardson on Shakespeare's Women: Shakespeare Uncovered
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm



Shakespeare Uncovered: In Twelfth Night and As You Like It, Joely Richardson investigates (with a major contribution from her mother Vanessa Redgrave) the legacy of the two great comedies and the great comic heroines created by Shakespeare in those hugely popular plays.


Shakespeare's comic heroines are well known to be some of his greatest creations and in this film Joely looks at Viola in Twelfth Night, washed up on a foreign shore, having (for her own safety) to disguise herself as a man and then falling in love with the man she is working for. Then there is the legendary Rosalind in As You Like It, who also spends much of the play disguised as a man but in the process torments and teases the man she loves in an effort to uncover how sincere he is.


Joely investigates the reason why these heroines spend much of their time dressed as men - it was because they were originally created for young men to play. But at the same time we find that Shakespeare revealed an acute understanding and sympathy for women when he wrote these characters.


A variety of film versions are studied alongside the most recent productions at Shakespeare's Globe, and with contributions from the world's greatest Shakespearean scholars like Jonathan Bate and Germaine Greer and from actors like Vanessa Redgrave and Helen Mirren, this film reveals the legacy of strong, sassy, witty women that we inherit from William Shakespeare's great comedies.



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Wednesday 20th June


Factual; History; Documentaries

The Secret History of Our Streets
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/6 - Caledonian Road



In 1886 Charles Booth embarked on an ambitious plan to visit every one of London's streets to record the social conditions of residents. His project took him 17 years.


Once he had finished he had constructed a groundbreaking series of maps which recorded the social class and standing of inhabitants. These maps transformed the way Victorians felt about their capital city.


This series takes six archetypal London streets as they are now, discovering how they have fared since Booth's day.


Booth colour coded each street, from yellow for the 'servant keeping classes', down to black for the 'vicious and semi-criminal'. With the aid of maps the series explores why certain streets have been transformed from desperate slums to become some of the most desirable and valuable property in the UK, whilst others have barely changed.


This landmark series features residents past and present, exploring how what happened on the street in the last 125 years continues to shape the lives of those who live there now.


This episode features Caledonian Road, which starts next to King's Cross station and heads north for over a mile. From its beginning, the street has been resolutely working class and when Charles Booth visited he found it a depressing district.


But the people of 'the Cally', as it is affectionately known to residents, have held their community together despite being challenged by powerful outside forces as well as a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges.


Featuring fascinating and often passionate accounts from residents both past and present, the film tells the story of the changing faces of this remarkable street.




Law; Crime and Justice; Documentaries


The Strange Case of the Law

BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3



In his first television series, barrister Harry Potter tells the remarkable story of English justice for BBC Four. As an ordained priest in the Church of England, Harry spent eight years as a prison chaplain. He then trained as a barrister, was called to the Bar in 1993, and works exclusively in criminal defence.


Harry is a published author, with articles on prisons and criminal justice; a book on the history of capital punishment and two books on Scottish History. Harry was born and brought up in Glasgow.


Harry says: “As a Scot I may be said to have a dispassionate view of English Law, although it gratifies me to note that England’s greatest judge - Lord Mansfield - and her greatest barrister - Thomas Erskine, were Scottish too. The story of English Law is one about which we can all be proud. It is an important aspect of our national history, a boon we have given the world, and has been largely one which has ensured liberty and justice in equal measure, the two greatest attributes of civilisation.


“The English Common Law is anything but common. It is unique and peculiar to this country, growing out of the specifics of her history, and enshrining all that is best in our culture.”


English Common Law, with its emphasis on the role of the jury, set a standard of fairness that has influenced legal systems across the world. Many of the features that characterise today's courts were in place by as early as the 14th century and in this three-part series, Harry looks at how England came to have such a distinctive and enduring justice system.


In this first episode, Harry explores the rise of ‘trial by ordeal’ where painful and dangerous physical tests were used to determine guilt or innocence. He shows how systems of religious ‘proof’ came to be replaced by jury trial, explains why Henry II's attempt to unify law in England led to murder in Canterbury Cathedral, and takes a revealing look at the most famous legal document in history, the Magna Carta.




Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries


Ocean Giants
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Deep Thinkers



Humans have long wondered if the universe may harbour other intelligent life forms. But perhaps we need look no further than our oceans?


Whales and dolphins, like humans, have large brains, are quick to learn new behaviours and use a wide range of sounds to communicate with others in their society. But how close are their minds to ours? In the Bahamas, Professor Denise Herzing believes she is very close to an answer, theorising that she will be able to hold a conversation with wild dolphins in their own language within five years.


In Western Australia, dolphins rely on their versatile and inventive brains to survive in a marine desert. In Alaska, humpback whales gather into alliances in which individuals pool their specialised talents to increase their hunting success. We discover how young spotted dolphins learn their individual names and the social etiquette of their pod, and how being curious about new objects leads Caribbean bottlenose dolphins to self-awareness and even to self-obsession. Finally, the film shows a remarkable group of Mexican grey whales, who seem able to empathize with humans and may even have a concept of forgiveness. 






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Thursday 21st June




Factual; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment; Documentaries

Ocean Giants
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Voices of the Sea



Whales and dolphins are nature's supreme vocalists, with a repertoire to put an opera singer to shame. The mighty sperm whale produces deafening clicks in its blowhole which it uses to locate giant squid two miles down in the ocean abyss, while migrating narwhals use similar sounds to pinpoint vital breathing holes in Arctic ice-floes.


The pink boto dolphin creates bat-like ultrasonic clicks to 'see with sound' and to catch fish in the murky waters of the Amazon River, and also uses whistles and chirps for social conversations.


Killer whales in the North Sea use wolf-like howls to round up the herring shoals which they feed on, and they and other dolphins also use percussive tail slaps and splashing leaps to signal to each other. One group of bottlenose dolphins in Brazil has even learned to communicate with fishermen in a unique partnership.


But the most famous and mysterious voice of all the Ocean Giants surely belongs to male humpback whales, whose haunting operatic performances may last several hours and seem to be about singing purely for the sheer pleasure of making music.




Factual; Documentaries


London On Film

BBC4, 11:30-12:00am, 1/3 - The West End


From bright lights, showbusiness and shops to riots, sleaze and traffic jams, film-makers have long been drawn to London's West End. Using a rich mix of archive material, this film paints a colourful and surprising portrait of the city's beating heart.


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Friday 22nd June


Documentaries

Dispatches: Let Our Dad Die
Channel 4, 2:20-2:50am


In 2005 Tony Nicklinson had a catastrophic stroke, which has left him utterly paralysed. He has what is known as 'locked in syndrome' and cannot move, talk, feed himself or perform even the most basic function without help. He can only communicate via a computer controlled by his eyes.


Tony Nicklinson wants to die, but he cannot kill himself without help, and anyone who helped him would be committing murder.


On the eve of a historic and controversial legal bid to demand the right to be killed, he tells his story, comes face to face with his critics, and hears from the Greek doctor who saved his life seven years earlier, who says he wouldn't wish this condition on his worst enemy.I




Factual

Simon Schama's Shakespeare
BBC2, 9:00-100:00pm, 1/2 - This England


Schama explores how Shakespeare created a vision of England that still rings true today.




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