Tuesday 11 December 2012

Off-air recordings for week 22 December - 4 January 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.

_____________________________________________
Sunday 23rd December

Documentaries

Joanna Lumkley: The Search for Noah's Ark
ITV1, 9:00-10:30pm


Joanna Lumley embarks on an epic journey overseas to investigate one of the oldest and most famous stories in the world – Noah’s Ark.

Joanna sets out across two continents to investigate the origins of this ancient tale. Was there a global flood and where did it happen? What was the ‘Ark’ ship like and where is it now? Perhaps most importantly – why does this story hold such resonance and significance for people across so many religions and cultures around the world?

The story of Noah has fascinated many adventurers and explorers who have gone in search of the Ark – from Marco Polo to Sir Walter Raleigh, and more recently NASA astronaut James Irwin. But beyond a physical search for the ship, Joanna is also keen to unearth the symbolism of the story – from the dove as a sign of peace to the rainbow as a sign of hope.

Joanna’s epic adventure takes her from nomads on the slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey to an ancient Sumerian flood tale on the Mesopotamian flood plain – now on the Turkish/Syrian border. In India a lost civilization, ancient trade routes and the Hindu faith turn up more clues, as do the sinking mountain ranges and maritime history of Oman.

The twists and turns of Joanna’s detective story provide a fresh perspective on how myth, legend, religion and science have come to play their part in understanding a story far older than the Bible itself. The journey to uncover the origins of one of the most enduring tales of all time is a surprising one.



_____________________________________________
Monday 24th December

Literature; Animation

A Christmas Carol
BBC1, 6:45-8:15pm

An animated retelling of Charles Dickens' classic novel about a Victorian-era miser taken on a journey of self-redemption, courtesy of several mysterious Christmas apparitions.


_____________________________________________
Tuesday 25th December

Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Arena: Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospel
BBC2, 5:25-6:25pm


The arresting sight of Sister Wendy Beckett - all teeth and glasses - burst on to our screens in the 1990’s. An instant star, she glided around the world in her habit telling us the story of painting. But she revealed nothing of her own, extraordinary story.

Was she in fact a real nun? How did she know so much about art? And how could this consecrated virgin and hermit justify appearing on television and keep her rule of silence?

Arena goes in search of the ‘real’ Wendy, who, at 82, talks frankly and humourously about her life – and death (“not too long now, I hope!”) for the first time. The film's director, Randall Wright, met Wendy over 20 years ago, living in a caravan in the middle of a wood, abiding by a strict timetable of nightly prayer. That meeting led to her hugely popular TV programmes, but while they told us a great deal about art they told us little about her. Now Wright revisits Sister Wendy to offer her the chance to make a film on her own terms.

Her Carmelite monastery gave Arena unprecedented access to their grounds in Quidenham, Norfolk, where Sister Wendy still follows her strict and eccentric regime: praying every night for six hours from midnight, then joining the other Sisters for mass via electric scooter. Sister Rachael is the former prioress at the monastery: “I would say if you expressed it in the old jargon, she could read souls.”

Typically, Sister Wendy set her own unusual ground rules for the programme: she would – albeit reluctantly - talk about her own life, but also wanted to share with us a carefully chosen selection of paintings by the greatest old masters – mostly in the National Gallery and Louvre – in an attempt to connect us to the big emotional insights in the Gospel stories they depict. These are the stories that are at the core of her faith and have formed her unique rebellious spirit. Yet these same stories - that were once universally familiar - and formed the moral template of Western civilisation – are now largely forgotten.

“I have noticed it in museums,” she says: “People looking at the kind of Christian stories that they would have been told in Sunday school in the past. Now they just don’t know.”

As we rediscover both the stories and the paintings, we also discover how Wendy found God, aged four, sitting under a table. How she left her parents aged 16 – without a backward glance - to become a nun. She tells us she has never experienced sexual feelings, and so felt being a nun was no real sacrifice. She reveals how her first job, as a teaching nun, led to a physical and nervous breakdown. And how living as a hermit ironically gave her the strength to face the outside world again, and encourage people towards the beauty of art.


_____________________________________________
Wednesday 26th December

Science; Lectures

Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Air: The Elixir of Life


Take a deep breath. Inside your lungs is a mixture of highly reactive and incredibly stable gases. Oxygen is the most reactive constituent. When we eat it’s these O2 molecules that seize electrons from our food to give our bodies the energy to live. Add a third oxygen atom and we make ozone, a gas so reactive that it’s toxic if we breathe it in, but high up in the stratosphere this gas protects us from the sun’s radiation. Add a carbon atom and we produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas responsible for warming the planet. We will unravel the puzzle of how and why these compounds of oxygen hold the key to the viability of life on the planet.

Nitrogen, the most common element in air, is an unreactive gas, but a key atom in every cell in every living thing on Earth.  How can we imitate nature to bring this suffocating gas alive?  Even less reactive are the Noble or inert gases. They’re so stable they are the only elements that exist naturally as individual atoms – but what is it about them that make them so inert? And how can we excite these gases enough to join the chemical party? We’ve come a long way from the days when alchemists thought air was a single element.


Children's Literature; Drama; Documentaries


Moominlandtales: The Life of Tove Jansson
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm

Moomintroll and the Moomin family are characters loved by children and parents worldwide who have grown up listening to Finnish writer Tove Jansson's delightful stories about a group of philosophical trolls who face a range of adventures in Moominland. This documentary reveals the strong autobiographical slant in the Moomins series as it traces the author's own extraordinary story from living the bohemian life of an artist in war-torn Helsinki to becoming a recluse on a remote island in the Gulf of Finland. Enjoying unprecedented access to Jansson's personal archive, the film reveals an unconventional, brave and compelling woman whose creative genius extended beyond Moominland to satire, fine art and masterful adult fiction - not least her highly-regarded The Summer Book. With home movie footage shot by her long-term female lover and companion, it offers a unique glimpse of an uncompromising fun-loving woman who developed love as the central theme of her work.

_____________________________________________
Thursday 27th December

Science; Lectures

Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - Water: The Fountain of Youth


Water is essential to life since every reaction in our bodies takes place in it.  But what makes this fluid so special?  What happens when you add a lighted splint to a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen? Kaboom! But why? What makes this particular rearrangement of atoms to form water so explosive? Can we tap this energy release to provide environmentally friendly solution to our energy problems? Plants have the ability to reverse this reaction by using the energy from sunlight to release oxygen from water.  We are starting to learn how to do the same.

In this lecture we unpack how energy lies at the heart of chemistry. We’ll also look at the salts contained in water. Once again we will see the startling difference between a compound and its constituent elements. Take sodium chloride – aka table salt. Sodium is a soft silvery metal that explodes with water; chlorine a deadly poisonous, choking green gas.  Both elements are lethal to us, but after they have met, a dramatic change takes place.  The sodium and chloride ions that form are essential components in our bodies. They help generate the electrical impulses that make our brains and nerves work. We begin to see how chemistry plays a vital role in our lives.


_____________________________________________

Friday 27th December

Science; Lectures

Royal Institute Christmas Lectures: The Alchemist
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Earth: The Philosopher's Stone


The rocks that form planet Earth have always fascinated alchemists. Deep in the bowels of the Earth they thought the metals literally grew in the rocks and that one metal over time matured into another.  They dreamed of replicating these natural processes turning ‘base metals’ into gold. Today the extraction of minerals and metals from rocks has made fortunes, but not quite in the way the alchemists imagined. We now know many rocks are the result of oxygen combining with different elements – each with individual properties. Breaking the strong bonds between oxygen and these elements has always been a challenge. Humankind learned how to release copper in the Bronze Age, and iron in the Iron Age, through smelting. Now we can extract even more exotic materials.

By understanding the properties of materials, such as the silicon present in computers, or the rare earth magnets generating our electricity in wind turbines, we are entering a new era of chemistry in which we can engineer electrons in new configurations for future technologies. We can now put together the unique cluster of protons, neutrons and electrons that form each of the 80 elements in exciting new ways. If the ancient alchemists were alive today they’d be dazzled by the wonders created by the Modern Alchemist.



_____________________________________________
Tuesday 1st January 2013

Religion; Documentaries

Goodbye To Canterbury
BBC2, 5:30-6:30pm


On the eve of his retirement as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams gives BBC Two an exclusive insight into his thoughts after 10 years in one of the toughest jobs in Britain.

Goodbye To Canterbury reveals how the art and architecture of Canterbury Cathedral have been a spiritual touchstone throughout his ministry; how ancient stones and relics are signposts in the modern world; and what this extraordinary building has to teach his successors.

The Archbishop reveals how the struggle between the established Catholic church and the new forces of the Reformation shaped the cathedral and, even today, mean it is a divided building. He also reveals how the brave deeds of the ordinary people of Canterbury saved their church from the carpet bombing of the Luftwaffe in 1942 – and most recently, how the ancient stones have taught him how to respond to the pressures of being a modern Archbishop.

This is a journey through 2000 years of English art and architecture: most spectacularly, the exotic tombs of his predecessors, the Archbishops’ throne itself, the oldest illustrated book in England, a casket that once held remains of the most famous saint in the medieval world, and the Miracle Windows showing pilgrims restored to health.

Most importantly, the Archbishop reveals how the tensions between Church and State (which led to the murder of an archbishop in 1170, inside the cathedral) continue today as both the cathedral building and the individual holding the office of Archbishop must struggle to resolve twin loyalties to country and to God.

As Archbishop Williams asserts: “This is the mother church of England… throughout history, any battle about how this space was going to be used was in part a battle for the very soul of England… even today, it is the point of intersection between the kingdom of God, the values of God, and all the skill, the art, the problems, the politics of human beings.”



Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries

Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3


In the first programme of this two-part series, Chris Packham takes us around the world to the scene of some of the weirdest natural events on the planet. With the help of footage taken by eyewitnesses and news crews, he unravels the facts and the science behind each phenomenon.  There is the mysterious case of the car cocooned by caterpillars in Holland, and the baffling case of the exploding toads in Germany. In Switzerland a lakeside town is entombed in ice and a once in a lifetime storm turns Sydney, Australia crimson overnight. There are some disturbing plagues of mice and locusts and a swarm of ladybirds. And finally there are extraordinary strandings of starfish, crabs and whales.  Chris tells the real story of the events behind the headlines and helps to explain what on earth happened.



_____________________________________________
Wednesday 2nd January

Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries

Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3


The second in this two-part series about the weirdest natural events on the planet features the incredible sea foam which turns part of the Australian coast into what looks like the world's biggest bubble bath. Plus there is a look at the mysterious death of thousands of sea birds on America's west coast, and the otherworldly phenomenon known as milky seas.

Other strange events include thousands of birds falling from the sky in America, causing panic and predictions of the apocalypse among the residents, and the fish that fell from the sky in south London.

And finally there is the story of the truly terrifying holes which open up in the earth's crust and swallow not only buildings, but in the case of a nature reserve in Florida, an entire lake.



Factual

Africa
BBC1, 1/6 - Kalahari

South West Africa is home to two great deserts. Animals will need their wits to survive.


_____________________________________________
Thursday 3rd January

Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries

Nature's Weirdest Events
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3

Chris Packham examines some of the weirdest natural events on the planet. With the help of footage taken by eyewitnesses and news crews, he unravels the facts behind each story


Factual; Documentaries

Death Camp Treblinka: Survival Stories
BBC4, 11:05pm-12:05am

The dark heart of the Nazi holocaust, Treblinka was an extermination camp where over 800,000 Polish Jews perished from 1942. Only two men can bear final witness to its terrible crimes. Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman were slave labourers who escaped in a dramatic revolt in August 1943. One would seek vengeance in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, while the other would appear in the sensational trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. This film documents their amazing survivor stories and the tragic fate of their families, and offers new insights into a forgotten death camp.

____________________________________________









Wednesday 5 December 2012

Off-air recordings for week 8-14 December 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.

_____________________________________________
Sunday 9th December

Factual; Documentaries

The Trouble with Aid
BBC4, 9:00-11:00pm


45 years ago a group of young men and women set out to make the world a better place. They wanted to bring aid to those in dire need. These idealists would help create a new mass movement - humanitarianism. Its core belief is a simple one - that it is our duty to help those in desperate need, wherever they are. But trying to do good in the world's worst conflict zones is filled with danger and compromise.

The Trouble with Aid tells the story of what really happened during the major humanitarian disasters of the last 50 years: from the Biafran War, through to the Ethiopian famine and Live Aid, to the military intervention in Somalia and to present-day Afghanistan. Despite the best intentions, aid can have some unintended and terrible consequences.

Using the testimony of key players from the world's largest aid agencies, the film looks at what happens when good people try to help in a bad world.

Today, any humanitarian crisis leads to cries that we must 'do something'. The Trouble with Aid challenges this fundamental assumption by asking the question few us are prepared to face: can aid sometimes do more harm than good?


Factual; Discussion and Talk

The Trouble with Aid - The Debate
BBC4, 11:00-11:45pm

Saving lives in dangerous and complex humanitarian crises is fraught with moral dilemmas. Further exploring the emergencies highlighted in Ricardo Pollack's film The Trouble with Aid, aid professionals and critics debate whether there are occasions when humanitarian aid might do more harm than good, and what emergency aid means in the 21st century.


_____________________________________________
Monday 10th December

News

Panorama: The Secret Drone War
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm


America's CIA is fighting a secret war in the badlands of Pakistan - targeting al Qaeda and other militants with hellfire missiles in drone strikes that the UN says are illegal. No one knows the true number who have died, but it is estimated that the death toll may be around 3,000 - some of them, it is claimed, innocent women and children.

Panorama goes to Waziristan, one of the most dangerous places in the world, to report on the drone war and to find out from its victims why they are seeking justice in the British courts.



_____________________________________________
Tuesday 11th December

Documentaries

Is Our Weather Getting Worse?
Channel 4, 9:00-9:00pm

n Britain we love to moan about the weather. And over the past decade we have experienced some extraordinary weather conditions, with 2012 no exception. It has led many people to wonder if our weather really is getting worse.

The year started with storms and gale-force winds tearing across much of the UK, before our driest spring in a century left 35 million people in the UK suffering from drought. In Aberdeen in March, temperatures soared to 23 degrees Celsius. But within four weeks, everything had changed. April 15 marked the beginning of our wettest summer on record. Towns such as Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire were flooded not once, but twice, and by the end of August 4000 homes across Britain had been devastated by floods. But the strange events of 2012 are only part of the story. For the past decade, our weather has been so erratic that government scientists have begun to use words like 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinary'.

This programme gets to the truth of our extraordinary decade of extreme weather. Blending dramatic archive footage, expert insight and cutting-edge graphics, the film investigates the most severe weather events to have struck Britain in recent memory and puts them into the wider context of climate change. Are the strange events of 2012 a one-off or an ominous sign of climate change in action? How does the changing global climate affect the British weather and what can we expect in the future? Is our weather getting worse?



Factual; News

Cuba with Simon Reeve
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Cuba to find a communist country in the middle of a capitalist revolution. Two years ago Cuba announced the most sweeping and radical economic reforms the country has seen in decades. From ending state rationing to cutting one million public-sector jobs, one of the last communist bastions in the world has begun rolling back the state on an unprecedented scale. Simon Reeve meets ordinary Cubans whose lives are being transformed, from the owners of fledgling businesses to the newly rich estate agents selling properties worth up to 750,000 pounds.


In this hour-long documentary for the BBC's award-winning This World strand, Simon gets under the skin of a colourful and vibrant country famous for its hospitality and humour and asks if this new economic openness could lead to political liberalisation in a totalitarian country with a poor human rights record. Will Cuba be able to maintain the positive aspects of its long isolation under socialism - low crime, top-notch education and one of the best health systems in the world - while embracing what certainly looks like capitalism? Is this the last chance to see Cuba before it becomes just like any other country?



Factual; Documentaries

The Dark Ages: An Age of Light
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/4 - The Wonder of Islam

The Dark Ages have been misunderstood. History has identified the period following the fall of the Roman Empire with a descent into barbarism - a terrible time when civilisation stopped.


Waldemar Januszczak disagrees. In this four-part series he argues that the Dark Ages were a time of great artistic achievement, with new ideas and religions provoking new artistic adventures. He embarks on a fascinating trip across Europe, Africa and Asia, visits the world's most famous collections and discovers hidden artistic gems, all to prove that the Dark Ages were actually an 'Age of Light'.

Along with Christianity, the Dark Ages saw the emergence of another vital religion - Islam. After emerging in the near East it spread across North Africa and into Europe, bringing its unique artistic style with it. Waldemar examines the early artistic explorations of the first Muslims, the development of their mosques and their scientific achievements



_____________________________________________
Wednesday 12th December

Factual; Science and Nature; Environment; Documentaries

Miniature Britain
BBC1, 8:00-9:00pm

Biologist George McGavin goes on a journey around the British Isles to show us the extraordinary little things that are vital to our land. With a revolutionary new microscope camera seven thousand times more powerful than the human eye, George reveals the surprising beauty of Britain close-up.

Caterpillars' feet have hooks that anchor them to leaves even upside down, the wings of butterflies and moths are a kaleidoscope of colourful scales that keep them safe from predators, bee stings have barbs that make them stick deep in your skin, and feathers have thousands of hooks that zip together keeping birds airborne.

Our cities are full of invisible miniature life too: millions of cute 'water bears' graze pavement mosses, and our homes have legions of dust mites scavenging for food in our carpets. This is Britain as you've never seen it before.



Factual; History; Documentaries

Rome: A History of the Eternal City
9:00-10:00pm, 2/3

Simon Sebag Montefiore charts the rocky course of Rome's rise to become the capital of Western Christendom and its impact on the lives of its citizens, elites and high priests. Rome casts aside its pantheon of pagan gods and a radical new religion takes hold. Christianity was just a persecuted sect until Emperor Constantine took a huge leap of faith, promoting it as the religion of Empire. But would this divine gamble pay off?



_____________________________________________
Thursday 13th December

Factual; News; Documentaries

Britain's Hidden Housing Crisis
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm

Britain is in the grip of a housing crisis of a sort not seen before, where even the most unexpected people are finding themselves homeless. Every two and a half minutes someone in Britain is threatened with losing their home. Hard-working people who’ve reliably paid their rent or mortgages for years can be only a few pay packets away from finding themselves without a roof over their heads. And with more people becoming homeless and fewer homes being built, tens of thousands of families are living in temporary accommodation, sometimes in squalid conditions.

In Britain’s New Homeless, Panorama follows the struggles and challenges faced by four people as they face the reality of losing their homes. Filmed over the course of five months, the programme reveals the devastating impact of losing everything:   An investment banker who, following the crash of 2008, lost everything and eventually found himself sleeping rough in a park in Croydon; another businessman whose company went under in the recession and whose family home was repossessed when he was unable to keep up the mortgage repayments; a grandmother who had worked all her life but could no longer pay the mortgage when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was forced to stop work; and a bus driver, whose family of six was evicted from their council house when they couldn't keep up with the rental payments. The family found themselves living in one-bedroom emergency accommodation, while the council decided whether they have made themselves 'intentionally homeless'.


Documentaries

Pensioners Behind Bars
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm

This colourful film includes the stories of men and women who have turned to crime only in later years after a lifetime as law-abiding citizens. It features a septuagenarian heroin dealer, a former driving instructor turned brothel keeper and a retired builder convicted of possession of blackmarket cigarettes and cannabis. They explain what drew them into crime, what it’s like to be locked up for the first time at their age, and how they are dealing with the consequences. It also shows how career criminals such as former Krays associate Freddie Foreman are coping in retirement and asks if they still retain the urge to commit crime.

The number of over-60s in prison has trebled in the last 20 years and the programme begins with Anthony McErlean, 67, serving a five-year sentence at HMP Elmley for an audacious fraud. After faking his own death while abroad, in order to swindle his insurance company out of £500,000, he realised the potential pitfalls of spending his old age overseas. “I thought if I get sick I can’t go back to the UK as a dead person and get healthcare. I’m up s*** creek without a paddle. I thought how do you un-kill yourself?”  Anthony was caught when police found his fingerprints on his own death certificate. He pleaded guilty to fraud and theft. He says: “I regret being in here, but I don’t feel that I shouldn’t be in here. I knew what I was doing and I knew the risks.”

But the programme features others who were shocked at being sent to prison. Grandmother Adele Lubin, 66, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for conspiracy to control prostitution at the age of 62 and began her term in Holloway. She started a legitimate massage therapy business but discovered that it was difficult to make money without offering extra services – and as her business expanded she became a brothel madam.  “The phone used to ring and they would say, ‘What kind of massage is it?’ And I would say, ‘Well it’s very therapeutic, and relaxing and sensual.’ And then some people would say, ‘Well do you do a happy ending?’ And I’d have to say, ‘Yeah, no problem.’   “I never thought if I ever got caught I’d end up in jail… I just didn’t think I was doing anything too terrible.”


_____________________________________________
Friday 14th December

News; World Affairs

Unreported World: Russia's Radical Chic
Channel 4, 7:30-7:55pm

Glamorous young Russian socialite Ksenia Sobchak has swapped high-profile TV stardom for a life leading political protests against President Putin, who also happens to be a close family friend.  Unreported World reveals how far Sobchak is risking her livelihood and privileged lifestyle to confront the strongman of the Kremlin, who has dealt ruthlessly with other political opponents.  Sobchak is one of the most famous people in Russia, known by millions as the presenter of Russian Big Brother, and a member of the elite that made fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her father was the mayor of St Petersburg and mentor to Vladimir Putin, a family friend. A quick search of her career highlights on YouTube turns up clips of her dancing lasciviously, fighting with a boyfriend, and being carried home to her apartment in a drunken stupor.

So, when Muscovites took to the streets in December 2011 in a series of unprecedented mass protests against electoral fraud and the Putin regime, they were amazed when she joined them, telling them she had a lot to lose in fighting their cause.  Since then, she's changed her image and started going out with Ilya Yashin, a political organiser. She's still using her celebrity, but now to oppose the regime of a man she's known since she was a child.  And she's suffering the consequences. By opposing the government, Sobchak has swapped a life of privilege for one of uncertainty. She's been banished from mainstream television to a tiny cable station, where she hosts a political discussion programme. In June 2012, armed police raided her apartment.

Reporter Marcel Theroux and director David Fuller follow Sobchak as she records an hour-long interview with Katya Samutsevich, one of the Pussy Riot protestors.  It's Sobchak's idea to film the interview outside with the cathedral the protestors invaded. At Sobchak's suggestion, she and Samutsevich wear prison jackets. It's a well-calculated tease, but the Kremlin is showing signs of losing patience with her.

Sobchak tells Theroux that she's just had word that her mother, a career politician, has lost her job. She attributes this, like her banishment to cable television and the police raid, to a government that is trying to squeeze the life out of the opposition. To a certain extent, it's succeeding. With Putin in office for another six years, and the most recent elections marked by low turn-outs and widespread apathy, it appears that a certain Russian fatalism is returning. As the Unreported World team leaves Moscow, Theroux concludes that high-wattage stars like Sobchak, who can galvanise Russia's younger and least cynical voters, could be an answer to this fatalism.



_____________________________________________