Off-air recordings for week 29 September - 5 October 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 29th September

Factual; History; Documentaries

Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Knowing Your Place

Dr Pamela Cox looks at the grand houses of the Victorian ruling elite - large country estates dependent on an army of staff toiling away below stairs.
The Victorians ushered in a new ideal of servitude - where loyal, selfless servants were depersonalised stereotypes with standardised uniforms, hairstyles and even generic names denoting position. In the immaculately preserved rooms of Erddig in North Wales, portraits of servants like loyal housekeeper Mrs Webster hint at an affectionate relationship between family and servants, but the reality for most was quite different.
In other stately homes, hidden passages kept servants separate from the family. Anonymity, invisibility and segregation were a crucial part of their gruelling job - and the strict servant hierarchy even kept them segregated from each other. 


Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries

The Clintons
BBC2, 10:15-11:15pm

The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
Winning the 1996 election in a landslide, Clinton pulls off one of the greatest turnarounds in political history and alongside him, Hillary succeeds in passing crucial legislation. Times are good, the economy is booming, and American prestige and power internationally are at an all-time high. The president's dream of repairing the breach with Republicans seems within reach and the Clintons seem stronger than ever. But then Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky - a White House intern - becomes public after she confides in a co-worker named Linda Tripp. The ensuing scandal gives Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr the ammunition he needs to recharge his stalled investigation of the Whitewater affair and Hillary her highest approval rating yet. 

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Sunday 30th September

Factual; History; Documentaries

Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/8 - Age of Empire

In this episode, Andrew Marr tells the story of the first empires which laid the foundations for the modern world.
From the Assyrians to Alexander the Great, conquerors rampaged across the Middle East and vicious wars were fought all the way from China to the Mediterranean. But this time of chaos and destruction also brought enormous progress and inspired human development. In the Middle East, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and one of the most powerful ideas in world history emerged: the belief in just one God. In India, the Buddha offered a radical alternative to empire building - a way of living that had no place for violence or hierarchy and was open to everyone.
Great thinkers from Socrates to Confucius proposed new ideas about how to rule more wisely and live in a better society. And in Greece, democracy was born - the greatest political experiment of all. But within just a few years, its future would be under threat from invasion by an empire in the east... 


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Monday 1st October

Factual; History; Travel; Documentaries

A303: Highway to the Sun
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm

The A303 is the road that passes Stonehenge on the way to the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. On the way, it whisks drivers through 5,000 years of remarkable moments in English history. And it is the star of this film made for armchair travellers and history lovers.
Writer Tom Fort drives its 92-mile length in a lovingly-restored Morris Traveller. Along the way he has many adventures - he digs up the 1960s master plan for the A303's dreams of superhighway status; meets up with a Neolithic traveller who knew the road like the back of his hand; gets to know a section of the Roman 303; uncovers a medieval murder mystery; and discovers what lies at the end of the Highway to the Sun. 

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am

Robert Hughes grapples with the artists who made visual art from the crags and vistas of their internal world - the Expressionists, including Van Gogh, De Kooning, Pollock and beyond.


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Tuesday 2nd October

Factual; History; Documentaries

The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/6 - The Making of Wales

Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. Thirty thousand years in the making, this story begins with the drama of the earliest-known human burial in Western Europe. Huw delves into the biggest prehistoric copper mine in the world, and visits the mesmerising site of an Iron Age hillfort. He reveals the true scale of the Roman occupation and shows how Welsh saints carried the light of the gospel to the rest of the Celtic world, and left a mark on their homeland that we can all still read today.


Crime; Documentaries

The Manson Family: Born To Kill?
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm

Charles Manson and his so-called 'family' would become the most infamous killers of the 20th century. Over two bloody nights in August 1969, seven people including actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of movie director Roman Polanski, were savagely murdered in their homes.
Their orgy of brutal and seemingly senseless slaughter shocked the world andmarked the end of the 1960s hippie dream. But what made Charles Manson the man he was? Why did so many young people fall under his spell and how was he able to convince them so easily to slaughter innocent people without conscience?
Contributors include detectives, attorneys and psychiatrists who tried to unravel the mystery, plus former members of the cult. Were Manson and his 'family' born to kill?


Factual; Histpry; Documentaries

Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip - An Emotional History of Britain
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3

Ian Hislop asks when and why we British have bottled up or let out our feelings and how this has affected our history.
Revealing as much about ourselves today as about our past, this is a narrative history of emotion and identity over the last three hundred years, packed with extraordinary characters, fascinating vignettes and much humour, illuminated through the lens of culture - novels, paintings, magazines, cartoons, film and television - from which Ian gives his personal take on our evolving national character.
Far from being part of our cultural DNA, emotional restraint was a relatively recent national trait. Foreigners in Tudor England couldn't believe how touchy-feely we could be - 'wherever you move there is nothing but kisses' wrote a shocked Erasmus. In this opening episode, Ian Hislop charts how and why the stiff upper lip emerged in the late 18th and early 19th century in a country till then often awash with sentiment.
In 18th century British society, public emoting was a sign of refinement and there was a vogue for all things sentimental. It was very much the done thing for women and men to weep at Samuel Richardson's novels or have Johann Zoffany paint their portraits to highlight their tenderness and sensitivity. But Ian reveals that a new idea - politeness - paved the way for the emergence of the stiff upper lip by prizing consistency of behaviour over emotional honesty. To illustrate this he plunders the candid diary of James Boswell, an aspirational young Scot plagued with anxieties about how far he should show his feelings in fashionable London...


Factual; Families and Relationships; Health and Wellbeing

Is Breast best?: Cherry Healey Investigates
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm


In this fun yet compelling documentary, Cherry Healey explores the topical issue of breastfeeding and asks Is Breast Best? The World Health Organisation advises that all mothers breastfeed their children for at least the first six months after birth, but Cherry herself found the experience painful and traumatic and eventually gave up.

Over a year later she is still plagued by feelings of guilt for not trying harder and is now on a mission to find out how other mums feel - is she the only one? Along the way she meets Jess, a teen mum who never even considered breastfeeding and has formula-fed all the way with no worries at all, and a group of 'lactivists' who strongly believe that breastfeeding is the only option for a new mum.

Join Cherry as she explores the world of boobs, bottles, babies and breast milk with her usual refreshing honesty.


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Wednesday 3rd October

Factual; History; Documentaries

The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 2/6 - Power Struggles


Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. This
Story of Wales spans seven centuries from the building of a great frontier to Owain Glyndwr's epic struggle for independence.
We meet the medieval kings who shape Wales and watch a nation emerge out of their lust for power and land. Amidst battles
with Vikings, Saxons and Normans, Welsh culture flourishes. But the death of our last native Prince is followed by a century of
plague and famine. Then, the charismatic Glyndwr leads a rebellion against the English Crown.


Factual; Documentaries

Welcome to India

BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3


Learning how to survive on an increasingly crowded planet is probably our ultimate challenge. But there is one place, home to over a sixth of the world's population, which is already making a good shot at adapting: welcome to India. This extraordinary observational series casts aside the usual preconceptions about the sub-continent, and lets a few of India's 1.2 billion show how their world really works.

With astonishing access into the densest districts of Kolkata and Mumbai, it celebrates the impressive resourcefulness, resilience and absolute pragmatism of those living and working there, and reveals the psyche needed to get ahead in the biggest of crowds.

This follows two main characters as they employ all their ingenuity to carve out a home. With more people moving to cities in India than anywhere else on earth, securing that place you can call home is vital for nurturing your family's future.

Kaale has come to Kolkata in search of gold - incredibly, he earns a living by sweeping the streets of the jewellery district for stray gold dust. But to fulfil his business ambitions, he must escape his landlord and rent a room of his own. His plan pushes even his resourcefulness to the limit: dredging for gold in Kolkata's drains.

Rajesh and his wife Sevita have created their home on a Mumbai beach after their controversial love marriage. They support their kids' future with some impressive improvisation, including running their house as a makeshift beach pub selling cane liquor. But then eviction by the Mumbai council threatens their home for good.


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Thursday 4th October


Factual; Documentaries

Health Before the NHS
BBC4, 11:35pm-12:35am, 2/2 - A Medical Revolution

Timeshift: The Robert Winston-narrated mini-series concludes with the story of hospitals. At the beginning of the 20th century these were forbidding places very much to be avoided - a last resort for the destitute rather than places you would go to get better. Using unique archive footage from an era when infectious disease was virtually untreatable and powerful first-hand accounts from patients, doctors and nurses, the programme explores the extraordinary transformation of the hospital from Victorian workhouse to modern centre of medicine.

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Friday 5th October

Factual; History; Documentaries

Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - Class War


Dr Pamela Cox explores what happened when servants directly challenged their masters and mistresses, causing havoc in the golden age of Edwardian society.

It is the story of wayward laundry maids, butlers selling their stories to the press and even suffragette maids. Above all, it is the story of how the Victorian 'ideal' of service came to be questioned - not by employers, but by the servants themselves.

The middle classes had an insatiable need for servants in their heavily furnished townhouses, but at the same time the number of people in the so-called 'servant class' dropped, as young workers were lured into shops and factories. To plug the gap, a new source of servants was found - shockingly, among the urban poor - mopping up orphans, waifs and strays from slums, workhouses and reforms schools and training them for careers in domestic service. As the clouds of war gathered, the whole notion of service was in crisis.


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Off-air recordings for week 22-28 September 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 22nd

Factual; News

This World - Aung San Suu Kyi: The Choice
BBC2, 8:10-9:10pm


Documentary which captures the moment when the Nobel Prize winning dissident Aung San Suu Kyi took the huge, risky step into everyday politics in Burma. This tells Suu Kyi's extraordinary personal and political story, how she turned from Oxford housewife into national leader and then international icon of resistance.

Filmed over a year of tumultuous change in Burma, the film has two long interviews with Suu Kyi, with her colleagues in Burma and with her family and friends outside. Hillary Clinton describes the impact of meeting this woman, who she had long admired, as ''seeing a long lost friend'', yet comparing her to Nelson Mandela.

Suu Kyi talks of sadness but no regrets over the decision she took, while her colleagues outline clearly the ongoing gamble that they are all taking in compromising with the regime. Made over an extended period, the film uses a range of extraordinary unseen archive - not least the moment she meets her husband and son for the first time after five years.

Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries

The Clintons
BBC2, 10:25-11:25pm, 2/3 - Enemies


The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.

With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.

The Whitewater scandal threatens to de-rail Clinton's first budget and trouble is brewing in the remote countries of Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia. The Republicans, led by the formidable Newt Gingrich, gain control of Congress in the midterm elections shifting the political landscape to the right. Clinton, seemingly bereft of power, begins to sideline his most trusted advisors in favour of an aggressive political consultant named Dick Morris. The Republican 'Contract with America' is riding high and by spring of 1995, Gingrich and his allies choose the budget as the ground on which to wage their war. The Republican plan leads to a government shutdown and slowly the tide begins to turn in Clinton's favour.




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Sunday 23rd

Factual; History; Documentaries

Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/8 - Survival


Andrew Marr sets off on an epic journey through 70,000 years of human history. Using dramatic reconstructions, documentary filming around the world and cutting-edge computer graphics, he reveals the decisive moments that shaped the world we live in today, telling stories we thought we knew and others we were never told.

Starting with our earliest beginnings in Africa, Marr traces the story of our nomadic ancestors as they spread out around the world and settled down to become the first farmers and townspeople. He uncovers extraordinary hand-prints left in European caves nearly 30,000 years ago and shows how human ingenuity led to inventions which are still with us today. He also discovers how the first civilisations were driven to extremes to try to overcome the forces of nature, adapting and surviving against the odds, and reveals how everyday life in ancient Egypt had more in common with today's soap operas than might be imagined.



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Monday 24th

News; Documentaries

Dispatches: Undercover Retirement Home
Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm


Dispatches goes undercover to investigate the multi-million pound retirement property industry. As millions of retirees face downsizing their homes, reporter Morland Sanders and Dispatches' undercover pensioner look at some of the pitfalls of buying a retirement flat.  Sanders also meets the pensioners who've discovered living in a retirement home isn't what they hoped for as they battle through tribunals and try to reduce their living costs.


News

Panorama: Reading, Writing and Rip-Offs

BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm


Panorama investigates the computer supply companies whose directors have grown rich signing up hundreds of schools across the country to deals that have taken them to the brink of bankruptcy. Parents are usually unaware that their school can be carrying debts of up to 1.9 million pounds for overpriced or sub-standard equipment.

Reporter Paul Kenyon reveals the mis-selling that has ended the careers of head teachers who say they were duped by dishonest salesmen, forced some schools to make staffing cuts, and raises questions about the government's roll out of greater financial autonomy to schools.



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Tuesday 25th

Factual; History; Documentaries

Vikings
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3

Neil Oliver explores how the Viking Age finally ended, tracing the Norse voyages of discovery, the first Danish kings, and the Christian conversions that opened the door to European high society. He also uncovers the truth about England's King Canute - he was not an arrogant leader who thought he could hold back the waves, but the Viking ruler of an entire empire of the north and an early adopter of European standardisation.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documnetaries

British Passions on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 3/3 - Planes, Trains and Automobiles


Throughout the 20th century, archive films and newsreel footage has chronicled Britain's enduring fascination with the nation's most important modes of mass passenger transport. This film shows how Britons responded to advances in transport technologies and the emergence of new automobiles, rail services and aircraft designs - each of which held out the possibility of travel to new, exciting and previously inaccessible destinations.

Featuring contributions from the cultural critic Jonathan Glancey and the transport historian Christian Wolmar, it celebrates the contribution that these different forms of transport made to the collective imagination of the nation, and shows how such developments as jet aircraft and the Channel tunnel opened up new horizons for successive generations of British people.


Documentaries

The Boy Who Can't Forget

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


Can you remember what you were doing on 15 March 2003? Or what the weather was like on 30 May 2007?  Twenty-year-old British student Aurelien can. He is one of just a handful of people in the world who are baffling scientists with their ability to recall an incredible amount of their lives.

Some claim they can remember every day as if it were yesterday. Now Aurelien is the first Briton to go public with this extraordinary talent. Is it an elaborate trick or some sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour, or perhaps the result of physical differences in their brains?  Aurelien is put to the test by eight-time world memory champion Dominic O'Brien, and examined by memory expert Professor Giuliana Mazzoni.

This remarkable documentary explores the recently discovered phenomenon known as superior autobiographical memory. It looks into the theories of scientists trying to unravel the mystery in the UK and US, and the lives of the seemingly ordinary people who appear to have an extraordinary power we had no idea humans could possess. For the experts racing to find the answers, the discovery of this new group of people could transform the way we look at the workings of memory.

Perhaps we all have the same infinite memory system and we just need to work out how to unlock it. But if we could have an almost endless memory, would we really want it? American school administrator Jill Price was the first person in the world to be discovered with the condition and gives her first interview in over a year. Jill provides an insight into just how difficult life can be for some people when they can't forget.



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Wednesday 27th

News: Documentaries

Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 1/2


The first programme unravels the mysteries of MDMA, revealing how the drug affects the brain.

Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London will reveal the results of the scientific trial and the programme follows some of the volunteers - who include actor Keith Allen, novelist Lionel Shriver, a vicar, a former MP and an ex-soldier - through the trial.

The programme also looks at the potential side-effects and dangers of taking MDMA and includes a discussion with an expert who disagrees with the study and is sceptical about its purpose.


Documentaries

Exposure: The British Way of Death

ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm, 1/6

The first in a new series of Exposure documentaries goes undercover to reveal the dark side of the hugely profitable funeral business, with shocking examples of racism and disrespect of bodies and the bereaved.


Factual; Documentaries

Storyville: My Friend Sam - Living for the Moment

Documentary about an extraordinary man named Sam Frears. Sam, now 39 years old, was born with an extremely rare genetic disorder - Familial Dysautonomia - which left him with only a 50% chance of making it to his fifth birthday.

The film reveals a complex, engaging, exceptional person as he struggles with everyday life while pursuing his joint goals of getting his acting career back on track and finding love.



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Thursday 28th

News

Tonight: In Self Defence
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm

Julie Etchingham investigates the issue of a homeowner's right to defend themself and their property, meeting one couple who have been locked in a nightmare since intruders broke into their home with terrible consequences.


News: Documentaries


Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 2/2


The second programme investigates the implications of the scientific study of the effects of MDMA, including potential clinical uses - such as whether it could offer a breakthrough in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The programme discovers what recreational users can learn from the trial before discussing MDMA's classification as a Class A drug and possible long-term effects.




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Friday 29th

Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

JK Rowling - Writing for Grown-Ups: A Culture Show Special
12:50-1:20am


Harry Potter is one of the most successful publishing phenomena of our time, selling 450 million copies. Its success transformed its author, JK Rowling, from impoverished single mother to one of the nation’s richest women and our most successful living author.

Since The Deathly Hallows was published in 2007, Rowling’s fans have been desperate to know what she was going to do next. The answer is The Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults with some very grown-up themes.

The novel is set in the idyllic fictional English town of Pagford. Parish councillor Barry Fairbrother dies and the community is left reeling. As tensions gather around the ensuing local election, cracks in the picture-perfect town start to emerge…

One of the most hotly anticipated books of the year, The Casual Vacancy is published on 27 September 2012 and details are shrouded in secrecy. Expectation and pressure are enormous. In this Culture Show Special, broadcast the night before the novel is published, JK Rowling will finally reveal the exact nature of the novel, with exclusive readings and in-depth discussion about its ideas, characters and inspiration.

Interviewer James Runcie will meet the notoriously private writer in her hometown of Edinburgh to find out about the pressure and pitfalls of following up the 20th Century’s biggest literary phenomenon. Rowling will reveal how she finally moved on from Potter and the challenges of making the leap writing fiction for adults.

Runcie believes The Casual Vacancy is an intensely personal and passionate work, reveals unseen facets of the writer and will shock many of her fans. The world has changed since 2007, and Rowling has taken on some huge themes.




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Off-air recordings for week 15-21 September 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 15th September

Factual; Documentaries

The Clintons
BBC2, 10:25-11:25am, 1/3, Candidate


The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.

With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.

This first episode follows Bill Clinton's bumpy road to the 1992 presidential victory. From the political backwaters of Arkansas, Bill Clinton rises to Yale, where he meets a young woman named Hillary Rodham, who shares his intellect and idealism and becomes his wife. During a campaign repeatedly under siege by allegations ranging from draft dodging to womanizing, the Clintons unite and appear on 60 Minutes to rebuff the charges. Having emerged as a political force, the Clintons win the election. But despite all of their education and experience, the pair are unprepared for political life in Washington, and the tragic suicide of their close friend and ally, deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, underlines the new harsh reality they have to face up to.


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Sunday 16th September

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

British Passions on Film
BBC4, 11:45pm-12:15am, 1/3 - Fun and Games

Three-part series celebrating the hobbies, pastimes and leisure pursuits that have preoccupied the people of Britain during the last century. As a nation, the British have long been renowned for the creativity and enthusiasm they bring to their leisure pursuits. Whether by collecting cheese labels, painting characters on eggshells or finding unusual uses for sticky back plastic, Britons have always demonstrated enormous passion - and often, deep eccentricity - when pursuing the serious business of having fun. The first episode features enthusiasts of some of Britain's best-loved games, hobbies and leisure activities - and pays tribute to those with more offbeat preoccupations, including D-I-Y obsessives and those with a penchant for collecting street furniture.

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Monday 17th September

Crime; Law and Order; Documentaries

Frontline Police
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm, 6/6

With the weather turning from bad to worse it seems the roads have been transformed into a demolition derby and the frontline unit battles to keep the county moving. With the chopper overhead, the dog unit is dispatched to track down a driver involved in an accident, but will the irate father of the crash victim beat them to it?

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 4/8 - Trouble in Utopia

Robert Hughes' classic series about art in the twentieth century; the avant-garde and the modernist in the century of change.


This edition deals with the aspirations and reality of the art in which we live, architecture. Utopian visions rarely work in reality and Hughes examines the utopian in the parallel lines of concrete, towering verticals of steel and planes of glass of modernism in the buildings, built and planned, of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Gropius, which he contrasts with the paintings of Mondrian


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Tuesday 18th September

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

British Passions on Film
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/3 - Getting Away From it All

During the course of the 20th Century, millions of British workers benefited from the expansion of paid leave and an increase in leisure time. This enabled many Britons to realize a cherished dream: at last, they could escape from their everyday lives, and go on holiday.


Getting Away from it All traces the evolution of the British holiday, from hugely popular day-trips and annual fortnights in holiday camps to the mass market package holiday to the Costas - and shows how Britons have never been more at home when they've been far away from home, having fun in the sun.


Factual; History; Documentaries

Vikings
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3

Neil Oliver heads out from the Scandinavian homelands to Russia, Turkey and Ireland to trace the beginnings of a vast trading empire that handled Chinese silks as adeptly as Pictish slaves. Neil discovers a world of 'starry-eyed maidens' and Buddhist statues that are a world away from our British experience of axe-wielding warriors, although it turns out that there were quite a few of those as well.


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Wednesday 19th September

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Imagine... The Fatwa: Salman's Story
BBC1, 10:45pm-12:05am

Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, tells for the first time the inside story of how it felt to be condemned to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, and to spend the next decade in hiding. To coincide with the publication of Rushdie's new book about that time, Alan Yentob has been given unique access to the author and to the bodyguards who lived with him. Friends and writers like Ian McEwan and Hanif Kureshi speak frankly, as do Rushdie's sister, ex-wife and sons.


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Thursday 20th September

Documentaries

One Born Every Minute: Plus Size Mums

Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm

One Born: Plus Size Mums follows three severely obese pregnant mothers as they, and the professionals who care for them, do all they can to bring their children safely into the world


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