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 1st June
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries
British Masters
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - A New Jerusalem
Three-part series in which art historian James Fox explores 20th-century British art, a period he considers an extraordinary flowering of genius.
In the decades after the Second World War, at a time when many had lost their faith in humanity, British artists turned to the great figurative painting tradition to address the biggest questions of all: what does it mean to be human and how do we create a more humane world? Such existential angst is captured in Lucien Freud's harrowing early portraits and Graham Sutherland's Pembrokeshire landscapes. Francis Bacon stared deep into his own soul to explore the human capacity for evil, while Richard Hamilton warned against the false hope of consumerism. As national pessimism gave way to a new optimism, David Hockney dared to suggest Paradise might be available to us all. But in the early 1970s, just as the world finally began to recognise the genius of Britain's painterly tradition, young artists at home turned against it.
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Sunday 2nd june
Factual > History > Pets & Animals > Documentaries
Ice Age Giants
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 3/3 - Land of the Giants
Professor Alice Roberts journeys 40,000 years back in time on the trail of the great beasts of the ice age. This was the last time that giants like mammoths, woolly rhinos and sabre-toothed cats ruled our planet. Drawing on the latest scientific detective work and a dash of graphic wizardry, Alice brings the ice age giants back to life.
Astonishingly, even after thousands of years of ice crushing the northern hemisphere and temperatures of 20 degrees lower than those of today, many of the great giants of the ice age still walked the earth. It was only when the world had warmed up again that mammoths, woolly rhinos, sabre-toothed cats, giant ground sloths and glyptodonts finally became extinct. Professor Alice Roberts sets off on her last voyage back to the ice age to discover why.
Alice learns the moving story of a mother mastodon, an extinct relative of the elephant. From her tusks, scientists can tell how many calves she had and whether they reached adulthood. This evidence, together with harrowing injuries on other skeletons, tells a perplexing story of a species on the edge of extinction - mastodons were turning on mastodons. By looking at the behaviour of elephants today, scientists have come up with a surprising theory of why this happened.
The woolly rhino tells another story. Believe it or not, the one thing it couldn't stand was snow - which stopped it from getting enough grass. During the ice age in Europe and Siberia, snow was thin on the ground as so much water was locked up in the ice sheets. But when the ice ended, the snows increased, rhinos found themselves stuck and their little legs were unable to get them out of trouble.
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Monday 3rd June
News
Panorama - Cancer: Hope for Sale
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm
Reporter Richard Bilton investigates a controversial American doctor who claims he can cure cancer. Celebrities have helped raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to send British patients to his clinic. But Dr Burzynski's treatment has been dismissed by mainstream medicine and the US authorities have tried to close him down. So why has he been allowed to sell an unproven and experimental treatment for 30 years?
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology
Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams
BBC4, 11:30-12:30pm
Documentary presented by Professor Simon Schaffer which charts the amazing and untold story of automata - extraordinary clockwork machines designed hundreds of years ago to mimic and recreate life.
The film brings the past to life in vivid detail as we see how and why these masterpieces were built. Travelling around Europe, Simon uncovers the history of these machines and shows us some of the most spectacular examples, from an entire working automaton city to a small boy who can be programmed to write and even a device that can play chess. All the machines Simon visits show a level of technical sophistication and ambition that still amazes today.
As well as the automata, Simon explains in great detail the world in which they were made - the hardship of the workers who built them, their role in global trade and the industrial revolution and the eccentric designers who dreamt them up. Finally, Simon reveals that to us that these long-forgotten marriages of art and engineering are actually the ancestors of many of our most loved modern technologies, from recorded music to the cinema and much of the digital world.
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Tuesday 4th June
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Documentaries
What do Artists do all Day?
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm
With a new exhibition of her work opening in London in June, this film follows artist Cornelia Parker as she prepares for the show, working on several new pieces including her latest project - bronze sculptures of cracks in the pavement.
In the past, Cornelia has blown up a shed, squashed a brass band and famously exhibited a sleeping Tilda Swinton in a glass case. One of Britain's most original and acclaimed contemporary artists, her work encourages us to look differently at the world, transforming familiar objects into extraordinary and surprising art.
Geography > History > Documentaries
Town with Nicholas Crane
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/4 - Huddersfield
Crane’s decision to don the maroon strip of the Huddersfield Giants rugby league team and jog weedily out onto the pitch behind brawny, broken-nosed players is one he later regrets — but not as much as agreeing to dress up as an emperor and dance (very awkwardly) in a carnival procession.
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, is absent from most tourist guides yet it has, he says, “a handsome face” with a railway station that looks like a stately home, a thriving market, an impressive canal, a reputation for high-quality cloth and brass bands… and the ability to make people do embarrassing things.
The geographer explores Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, where former prime minister Harold Wilson was born and the place where rugby league is regarded as having been founded. He learns how an out-of-the-way village was transformed into a manufacturing centre during the Industrial Revolution, as well as how it might once again be about to prompt radical changes in the textile business. The presenter learns that the town's residents have a strong sense of identity, and actor Patrick Stewart recalls his childhood in the area.
Factual > Crime & Justice > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries
The Unspeakable Crime: Rape
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm
This film explores rape in a way that has never been seen on British television before: from forensic medical to police investigation, court and beyond.
Juliet was attacked by a stranger on New Year's Eve, while Kellie had known and trusted her attacker for over a decade. In 2012 St Mary's, the UK's leading sexual assault referral centre, allowed exclusive access, opening its doors to cameras as they supported Juliet and Kellie as well as over 1,000 other victims of rape seeking justice or attempting to move forward with their lives.
Through the experiences of the victims, the specialists at St Mary's, Greater Manchester Police's Serious Sexual Offences Unit and the Crown Prosecution Service, this film offers a unique and revealing perspective on rape in Britain today.
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Wednesday 5th June
Factual > History > Politics > Documentaries
The Iraq War
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - After the Fall
In After the Fall, part two of this three-part series, key insiders describe the chaotic aftermath of the defeat of Saddam Hussein. Dick Cheney and Colin Powell come to blows over America's role as occupying power. General David Petraeus recalls the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army. The representative of Grand Ayatollah Sistani - Iraq's most senior Shia cleric - tells how Sistani forced the Americans into agreeing to elections in Iraq. One of the greatest challenges came from Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army. America and the new Iraqi government were able to defeat Sadr militarily, but it set the stage for sectarian war.
The producers in charge of the series were Norma Percy, Brian Lapping and Paul Mitchell, the team at Brook Lapping Productions who were behind the multi-award-winning documentaries Iran & the West, Putin, Russia and the West, The Death of Yugoslavia etc.
Disability > Documentaries
Sex on Wheels
Channel 4, 11:00pm-12:05am
A warm, funny and extraordinary film exploring the different ways disabled people deal with the barriers they can face trying to fulfil that most basic human need: sexual intimacy.
Sex is everywhere. But what if something stood in the way of your experiencing a fulfilling sex life? There are over 10 million people living with disabilities in the UK and 85% of them are sexually active.
This sensitive and honest documentary takes a candid look at the sex lives of four disabled individuals, from the recently paralysed Karl, who is coming to terms with life without an erection, to Pete, who has cerebral palsy.
Pete's hoist helps him into every conceivable sexual position and he has ambitions to be the UK's first disabled porn star.
Leah, a 24-year-old woman with brittle bone disease, won't let her body's limitations get in the way of an adventurous sex life.
Twenty-six-year-old John has learning difficulties and he and his mother have taken the momentous decision to hire an escort to help him lose his virginity.
The film also follows Laura Lee, an escort who specialises in working with men with disabilities. She is immensely proud of what she does and sees herself as providing a unique and necessary service to men who might struggle to have an ordinary sexual relationship.
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Thursday 6th June
Super Tornado
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
A devastating tornado hit Oklahoma on 20 May. Alex Beresford speaks to survivors, rescuers and tornado scientists as he examines the power behind the world's most destructive winds.
Factual > History > Religion & Ethics
The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Melvyn Bragg explores the dramatic story of William Tyndale and his mission to translate the Bible into English. Melvyn reveals the story of a man whose life and legacy have been hidden from history but whose impact on Christianity in Britain and on the English language still endures.
His radical translation of the Bible into English made him a profound threat to the authority of the Church and state – and set him on a collision course with Henry VIII’s heretic hunters and those of the Pope.
Crime > Documentaries
The Alps Murders
Channel 4, 10:00-11:005pm
It's one of the most memorable unsolved crimes from 2012. A British family from a quiet suburban village on a caravanning holiday near Annecy in the French Alps, gunned down in broad daylight. Miraculously, the family's two young daughters survived.
The investigation into the apparently motiveless killings of three members of the Al-Hilli family and French cyclist Sylvan Mollier has involved British, French, Swiss, Swedish and Spanish agencies.
But with no obvious motives behind the killings, conspiracy theories and speculation have run riot, linking the victims with religious extremism, espionage and secret services.
There are rumours of secret Swiss bank accounts, inheritance disputes, French heiresses and bloody family feuds.
Eight months after the killings, there are no suspects, there have been no arrests and the investigation appears to have stalled.
This programme goes behind the headlines and puts the speculation to the test.
It features the only interview with the hiker who saw the crime scene and helped raise the alarm. A French journalist reveals that he has had sight of a confidential police report about the forensics of the crime scene.
The programme features an exclusive interview with a close friend of the Al-Hilli family and his extraordinary email exchange with his friend Saad Al-Hilli. And Dario Zanni, the Swiss prosecutor, is interviewed for the first time about the case.
Factual > History > Documentaries
Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm, 2/3
Professor Catharine Edwards explores the dramatic lives of two women at the heart of power in 1st-century imperial Rome. One is Messalina, whose scandalous reputation lives on 2,000 years after her bloody and dramatic death. The other is Agrippina - sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius and mother of Nero - an extraordinary woman who was not only a skilled and ambitious politician but also a murderer and ultimately a murder victim.
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Friday 7th June
Terrorism > News > Documentaries
The Secret Lives of the Boston Bombers
Channel 4, 2:30-3:00am
With access to the parents of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two brothers accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, this documentary plots their lives in the years leading up to the incident and examines what could have led them to become suspected killers. Including interviews with friends and neighbours of the suspects, and survivors of the attack.
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Wednesday 29 May 2013
Wednesday 22 May 2013
Off-air recordings for week 25-31 May 2013
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 25th May
Factual > Science & Nature > Documentaries
Swarm: Nature's Incredible Invasions
BBC4, 7:00-8:00pm, 2/2 - One Million Heads, One Beautiful Mind
Extraordinary photography reveals the incredible swarm intelligence that lies behind animal invasions.
Millions of free-tailed bats form a living tornado in which complex information is exchanged. Huge shape-shifting shoals of herring use swarm intelligence to detect predators. Billions of alkali flies form a rolling wave to evade the gaping mouths of gulls. Vast numbers of shore birds synchronise their migration with swarming horseshoe crabs, a feat of timing unparalleled in the animal world.
Fire ants invade and destroy computer equipment and, when their nest is flooded, create living rafts with their bodies. Inside a driver ants' nest we discover the inner workings of a brain made from thousands of individuals. One swarm is even helping to save the planet from the greenhouse effect.
Incredible images show the true complexity of the swarm and how their intelligence impacts on our world.
Factual > Science & Nature > Documentaries > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries
British Masters
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - In Search of England
The inter-war years were a period of alarming national change. With a generation of youth lost to the trenches and the cracks in the Empire growing fast, the nation's confidence was in tatters. If we were no longer a mighty Imperial power, what were we? John Nash's mesmerising visions of rural arcadia, Stanley Spencer's glimpses of everyday divinity, Alfred Munnings' prelapsarian nostalgia, Paul Nash's timeless mysticism, John Piper's crumbling ruins, even William Coldstream's blunt celebration of working-class life - all, in their own way, were attempts to answer this question. And, as a reprise of war grew ever more likely, they struggled more urgently than ever to create an image of Britain we could fight for.
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Sunday 26th May
Factual > History > Pets & Animals > Documentaries
Ice Age Giants
BBC2, 8:30-9:30pm, 2/3 - Land of the Cave Bear
Professor Alice Roberts journeys 40,000 years back in time on the trail of the great beasts of the Ice Age. Drawing on the latest scientific detective work and a dash of graphic wizardry, Alice brings the Ice Age giants back to life.
In the Land of the Cave Bear, Alice ventures to the parts of the northern hemisphere, hit hardest by the cold - Europe and Siberia.
High in the mountains of Transylvania, a cave sealed for thousands of years reveals grisly evidence for a fight to the death between two staving giants, a cave bear and a cave lion. These animals, which would dwarf their modern day relatives, were probably driven into conflict by the pressure on food supplies as the Ice Age gathered pace.
Yet Alice discovers that, for woolly rhinos and woolly mammoths, the Ice Age created a bounty. The Mammoth Steppe, a vast tract of land which went half way round the world, provided food all year round, for those that liked the cold. It was these mammoths that Europe's most dangerous predators - Neanderthals and our own ancestors - hunted for their survival.
History > Documentaries
Clare Balding's Secrets of a Suffragette
4Seven, 11:55pm-1:00am
On 4 June1913 Emily Wilding Davison stepped into the path of the King's horse at the Derby and was fatally injured.
Astonishingly, the terrible moment was captured on three newsreel cameras. The footage of a well-dressed Edwardian woman being killed by racehorses travelling at 35 miles an hour remains deeply shocking.
But though the act itself was captured in horrific detail, a century on, mystery and argument surround the story behind it: what exactly Emily Davison intended to do on the track that day; and what drove her to take such reckless action in the first place.
Clare Balding and a team of forensic experts have analysed the footage frame by frame, re-examined the evidence and, astonishingly, believe they may have made new discoveries that will change our view of what really happened on that fateful summer day.
Clare uncovers the story of Emily herself and finds out how a middle-class governess from a genteel family became a radical activist.
And she explores the hidden history of the militant wing of the votes for women campaign to which Emily belonged, revealing stories of terrible police brutality, forced feeding of hunger strikers, the early use of surveillance tactics that persist to this day and women prepared to use any means necessary to advance their cause.
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Monday 27th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > History > Documentaries
Britain on Film
BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 1/10, Series 2 - Times of Change
In 1959 Britain's biggest cinema company, the Rank Organisation, decided to replace its newsreels with a series of short, quirky, topical documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. During the 1960s - a decade that witnessed profound shifts across Britain's political, economic and cultural landscapes - many felt anxiety about the dizzying pace of change.
Look at Life reflected the increasing social and moral unease in films that tackled subjects ranging from contraception to immigration; from increasing stress at work to the preservation of the Sabbath; and from the environmental implications of waste management to the threat of nuclear weapons. Through these films, we can glimpse many of the seismic societal transformations of the Sixties developments that polarised the nation and changed life in Britain forever.
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Tuesday 28th May
Factual
Town with Nicholas Crane
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/4, Series 2 - Saffron Walden
More intimate than a city, towns are where we first learned to be urban. Harbour towns, market towns, island towns, industrial towns: collectively they bind our land together.
An attractive market town within easy commuting distance of London, Saffron Walden has some of the best preserved medieval architecture in the country. However its heritage is now under threat. Nicholas Crane discovers what gave this town its unique name and how the UK's housing crisis is affecting its future.
Documentaries > History > Writing
Words of Everest
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm
When Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Everest on 29th May 1953, his thoughts turned to a previous failed attempt made 29 years earlier, which remained shrouded in mystery. Marking the 60th anniversary of Hillary’s successful expedition, which was attempted as Coronation fever took hold in the lead up to the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II, a brand new documentary from ITV’s award-winning ‘Words of…’ strand brings to life the two stories, intertwined and retold side-by-side.
After Britain lost the race to both Poles, the word’s highest peak, Mount Everest was seen as the greatest remaining challenge on Earth. In 1924, intrepid British climbers, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared after being spotted just 800 yards from the summit. Twenty-nine years later, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay approached the same summit after a long and arduous journey, determined to claim their prize of being the first explorers to conquer the mountain.
The stories of these two expeditions are retold using the climbers’ own diaries and private letters read by actors including John Hannah, Jason Flemyng, Freddie Fox and Stephen Campbell Moore. Their personal perspectives, delivered straight to camera by the cast, along with original archive film and pictures plus some reconstruction, provide a vivid insight into the motivations of the key figures, the decisions and sacrifices they made and the challenges they faced, as well as the profound emotional peaks and troughs they experienced in making their attempts to conquer Everest. A brilliant climber, George Mallory (Stephen Campbell Moore: Hunted, Titanic, The History Boys) was made famous by two expeditions to Everest in 1921 and 1922. In 1923 a third trip was planned but Mallory had just moved to a new house in Cambridge with his wife Ruth (Zoe Boyle: Downton Abbey) and their children. Despite being deeply in love, fate would all too frequently pull the couple apart.
In a letter to his father, George wrote: “It is an awful tug to contemplate going away from here instead of settling down to make a new life with Ruth. We have both thought that it would look rather grim to see others, without me, engaged in conquering the summit. And now that the prospect arrives, I want to have a part in the finish.” Thirteen days later he’d made his mind up: “It’s all settled, and I’m to go again. I only hope it is a right decision. It has been a fearful tug. I’ve had to think precisely what I was wanted for.” Also part of the team was recent Oxford graduate Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine (Freddie Fox: Parade’s End, The Three Musketeers), the youngest of the party at 22 and with the least mountaineering experience. Colonel Edward Norton (John Hannah: The Mummy, Four Weddings and a Funeral), an expert climber and Everest veteran, was in charge.
For three weeks they sailed through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to Bombay, crossed the plains of India and the high Himalayan passes into Tibet. After four weeks trekking across the freezing Tibetan desert they finally reached the north slopes of Everest and climbed to the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier. Norton said: “We have reached the Base Camp exactly to plan, with not one sick man, English or Himalayan. The camp is humming as I write.” In a letter to his beloved Ruth, Mallory wrote: “The telegram announcing our success, if we succeed, will precede this letter, I suppose. But it will mention no names. How you will hope that I was one of the conquerors! And I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”...
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Wednesday 29th May
Factual > History > Documentaries
Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Professor Catharine Edwards explores the story of the remarkable Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus, mother of the emperor Tiberius and a woman whose influence was felt across the Roman world for over 60 years. But as Catharine explains, imperial women who lacked perfect political judgement would end up not as leaders but as victims. Both Augustus's daughter Julia and his granddaughter Agrippina would die miserably in exile.
Factual > History > Politics > Documentaries
The Iraq War
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - Regime Change
The people at the top of the CIA and Saddam's Foreign Minister describe just how the US and Britain got it so wrong about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.
Tony Blair recounts how he flew to President Bush's private retreat at Camp David to go head-to-head with Vice President Dick Cheney. Colin Powell explains how he came to make his disastrous presentation to the United Nations. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw describes how he - and even President Bush himself - tried to persuade Tony Blair that to join in the invasion was political suicide.
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Thursday 30th May
Factual > History
Henry VII: Winter King
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Thomas Penn charts the dark story of the godfather of the Tudors, a man who was never meant to be king but founded the most famous dynasty ever: Henry VII.
Psychology > Human Behaviour
Human Swarm
4Seven, 11:05pm-12:05am
We all like to think of ourselves as individuals, making up our own minds what to do and when to do it. But this eye-opening documentary, presented by Jimmy Doherty, reveals new evidence that suggests that in many ways we actually think and move like members of a herd of animals.
We each leave behind us a vast 'data trail' every time we travel, use our phone or credit card, search or buy online, use social media or visit a supermarket.
The documentary reveals how, by analysing and unlocking this mountain of data, scientists can monitor, predict and even manipulate our actions with amazing precision.
The programme shows how one of the most powerful influences on each of us is the temperature, with the smallest changes affecting us physically and psychologically, without us even being aware of it.
And it shows how individual changes in mood, appetite, behaviour and health can add up to a huge shift in behaviour across the country, with consequences for the health service, energy companies and retailers.
The programme reveals: how a tiny gland in our brains helps to choose our breakfast for us when it's cold; how each one degree drop in the temperature leads to an extra 200 heart attacks; why flu flourishes in winter; how our online searches can help track disease outbreaks; how supermarkets can predict when you will want to have a BBQ; when online dating sites see a 350% spike in traffic; and how sales of swimwear go up by 600% when the sun shines, whatever the temperature.
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Friday 31st May
News > World Affairs
Unreported World: Making Brazil Beautiful
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00pm
Unreported World reports on the huge growth in cosmetic plastic surgery in Brazil.
Reporter Seyi Rhodes and producer Suemay Oram reveal that even poor women living in favelas can achieve the Brazilian body beautiful through subsidised or free cosmetic surgery provided by plastic surgeons who feel all Brazilians have a right to be beautiful, even on the country's Public Health Service.
In Brazil, plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons is not frowned on like it can be in the UK, and having a surgically enhanced body is sometimes seen as a status symbol. The number of surgeries offering cosmetic enhancement has grown by 30 per cent in two years and there are now 10 times more plastic surgeons in Brazil than in the UK. Brazil is second only to the USA in the number of plastic surgery operations carried out each year.
Reasons for surgery vary: from wanting to have a body they feel comfortable with on the beach, to one that they feel will enhance their ability to get a job.
Many women that Rhodes talks to say that in body conscious Brazil, if you don't fit the perception of the perfect body, your chances of career advancement aren't as great.
As well as private operations, plastic surgery is available in Brazilian public hospitals. As in most countries, reconstructive surgery takes precedence, but surgeons also carry out aesthetic procedures.
They also have a very wide definition of what is reconstructive. Women who've had children can apply for a 'reconstructive' tummy tuck. Or a woman whose small breasts are causing her 'psychological distress' could have a breast augmentation for free.
Hospital administrator Karen Da Silva Chaves is being given a tummy tuck following the birth of her son, so that she can wear a bikini again. The operation is free on the Brazilian health service.
The team meet 87-year-old professor and former surgeon Dr Ivo Pitanguy. He pioneered the increase in plastic surgery treatment for poorer Brazilians and his organisation runs Santa Casa hospital's plastic surgery ward.
Patients make a 'donation' to the hospital, the amount of which depends on their chosen surgery and their earnings. Those who can't afford to pay but are deemed 'in need' of surgery can get it for free...
History > Documentaries
Britain's Stone Age Tsunami
4 Seven, 8:00-9:00pm
Tony Robinson reveals astonishing new evidence that shows how, 8000 years ago, a huge tsunami swamped the east coast of Britain.
The new research also explains the tsunami's cause, and transforms our understanding of the people whose lives it devastated.
Like recent tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Japan, Britain's tsunami was a phenomenally destructive force, with waves as high as 10 metres in many places.
But new research on the people who faced those waves has forced a new appreciation of the impact of the wave's destruction.
For years, these Mesolithic communities were thought to be primitive hunter-gatherers. But through remarkable new archaeological excavation, Tony discovers that people in Britain at that time were living comfortable, settled lives in their own houses, with varied diets and sophisticated skills.
The tsunami didn't just scare a few cavemen; it swamped a civilisation.
It was also the most dramatic incident in a long and volatile epoch of climate change that eventually separated Britain from continental Europe, and set the shape of our current coastline.
In 6000 BC, Britain was still joined to the rest of Europe by Doggerland, an area of dry land the size of Germany, where thousands of Mesolithic people lived.
In the programme, scientists take Tony on an astonishing virtual journey through Doggerland's rich and plentiful landscape, which was to be destroyed by the tsunami and then persistent flooding as the world's ice melted.
And they also reveal how the tsunami was caused by melting ice, triggering a chain reaction that left a trail of destruction from the top of these islands to the bottom.
Factual > History
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - The Common People
Dr. Ian Mortimer offers a unique travel guide to the world of Queen Elizabeth I. In a lavish and ground-breaking new way of exploring history, Ian takes us on a present-tense journey through this golden age of English history.
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*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence
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Saturday 25th May
Factual > Science & Nature > Documentaries
Swarm: Nature's Incredible Invasions
BBC4, 7:00-8:00pm, 2/2 - One Million Heads, One Beautiful Mind
Extraordinary photography reveals the incredible swarm intelligence that lies behind animal invasions.
Millions of free-tailed bats form a living tornado in which complex information is exchanged. Huge shape-shifting shoals of herring use swarm intelligence to detect predators. Billions of alkali flies form a rolling wave to evade the gaping mouths of gulls. Vast numbers of shore birds synchronise their migration with swarming horseshoe crabs, a feat of timing unparalleled in the animal world.
Fire ants invade and destroy computer equipment and, when their nest is flooded, create living rafts with their bodies. Inside a driver ants' nest we discover the inner workings of a brain made from thousands of individuals. One swarm is even helping to save the planet from the greenhouse effect.
Incredible images show the true complexity of the swarm and how their intelligence impacts on our world.
Factual > Science & Nature > Documentaries > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries
British Masters
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3 - In Search of England
The inter-war years were a period of alarming national change. With a generation of youth lost to the trenches and the cracks in the Empire growing fast, the nation's confidence was in tatters. If we were no longer a mighty Imperial power, what were we? John Nash's mesmerising visions of rural arcadia, Stanley Spencer's glimpses of everyday divinity, Alfred Munnings' prelapsarian nostalgia, Paul Nash's timeless mysticism, John Piper's crumbling ruins, even William Coldstream's blunt celebration of working-class life - all, in their own way, were attempts to answer this question. And, as a reprise of war grew ever more likely, they struggled more urgently than ever to create an image of Britain we could fight for.
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Sunday 26th May
Factual > History > Pets & Animals > Documentaries
Ice Age Giants
BBC2, 8:30-9:30pm, 2/3 - Land of the Cave Bear
Professor Alice Roberts journeys 40,000 years back in time on the trail of the great beasts of the Ice Age. Drawing on the latest scientific detective work and a dash of graphic wizardry, Alice brings the Ice Age giants back to life.
In the Land of the Cave Bear, Alice ventures to the parts of the northern hemisphere, hit hardest by the cold - Europe and Siberia.
High in the mountains of Transylvania, a cave sealed for thousands of years reveals grisly evidence for a fight to the death between two staving giants, a cave bear and a cave lion. These animals, which would dwarf their modern day relatives, were probably driven into conflict by the pressure on food supplies as the Ice Age gathered pace.
Yet Alice discovers that, for woolly rhinos and woolly mammoths, the Ice Age created a bounty. The Mammoth Steppe, a vast tract of land which went half way round the world, provided food all year round, for those that liked the cold. It was these mammoths that Europe's most dangerous predators - Neanderthals and our own ancestors - hunted for their survival.
History > Documentaries
Clare Balding's Secrets of a Suffragette
4Seven, 11:55pm-1:00am
On 4 June1913 Emily Wilding Davison stepped into the path of the King's horse at the Derby and was fatally injured.
Astonishingly, the terrible moment was captured on three newsreel cameras. The footage of a well-dressed Edwardian woman being killed by racehorses travelling at 35 miles an hour remains deeply shocking.
But though the act itself was captured in horrific detail, a century on, mystery and argument surround the story behind it: what exactly Emily Davison intended to do on the track that day; and what drove her to take such reckless action in the first place.
Clare Balding and a team of forensic experts have analysed the footage frame by frame, re-examined the evidence and, astonishingly, believe they may have made new discoveries that will change our view of what really happened on that fateful summer day.
Clare uncovers the story of Emily herself and finds out how a middle-class governess from a genteel family became a radical activist.
And she explores the hidden history of the militant wing of the votes for women campaign to which Emily belonged, revealing stories of terrible police brutality, forced feeding of hunger strikers, the early use of surveillance tactics that persist to this day and women prepared to use any means necessary to advance their cause.
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Monday 27th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > History > Documentaries
Britain on Film
BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 1/10, Series 2 - Times of Change
In 1959 Britain's biggest cinema company, the Rank Organisation, decided to replace its newsreels with a series of short, quirky, topical documentaries that examined all aspects of life in Britain. During the 1960s - a decade that witnessed profound shifts across Britain's political, economic and cultural landscapes - many felt anxiety about the dizzying pace of change.
Look at Life reflected the increasing social and moral unease in films that tackled subjects ranging from contraception to immigration; from increasing stress at work to the preservation of the Sabbath; and from the environmental implications of waste management to the threat of nuclear weapons. Through these films, we can glimpse many of the seismic societal transformations of the Sixties developments that polarised the nation and changed life in Britain forever.
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Tuesday 28th May
Factual
Town with Nicholas Crane
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/4, Series 2 - Saffron Walden
More intimate than a city, towns are where we first learned to be urban. Harbour towns, market towns, island towns, industrial towns: collectively they bind our land together.
An attractive market town within easy commuting distance of London, Saffron Walden has some of the best preserved medieval architecture in the country. However its heritage is now under threat. Nicholas Crane discovers what gave this town its unique name and how the UK's housing crisis is affecting its future.
Documentaries > History > Writing
Words of Everest
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm
When Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Everest on 29th May 1953, his thoughts turned to a previous failed attempt made 29 years earlier, which remained shrouded in mystery. Marking the 60th anniversary of Hillary’s successful expedition, which was attempted as Coronation fever took hold in the lead up to the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II, a brand new documentary from ITV’s award-winning ‘Words of…’ strand brings to life the two stories, intertwined and retold side-by-side.
After Britain lost the race to both Poles, the word’s highest peak, Mount Everest was seen as the greatest remaining challenge on Earth. In 1924, intrepid British climbers, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared after being spotted just 800 yards from the summit. Twenty-nine years later, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay approached the same summit after a long and arduous journey, determined to claim their prize of being the first explorers to conquer the mountain.
The stories of these two expeditions are retold using the climbers’ own diaries and private letters read by actors including John Hannah, Jason Flemyng, Freddie Fox and Stephen Campbell Moore. Their personal perspectives, delivered straight to camera by the cast, along with original archive film and pictures plus some reconstruction, provide a vivid insight into the motivations of the key figures, the decisions and sacrifices they made and the challenges they faced, as well as the profound emotional peaks and troughs they experienced in making their attempts to conquer Everest. A brilliant climber, George Mallory (Stephen Campbell Moore: Hunted, Titanic, The History Boys) was made famous by two expeditions to Everest in 1921 and 1922. In 1923 a third trip was planned but Mallory had just moved to a new house in Cambridge with his wife Ruth (Zoe Boyle: Downton Abbey) and their children. Despite being deeply in love, fate would all too frequently pull the couple apart.
In a letter to his father, George wrote: “It is an awful tug to contemplate going away from here instead of settling down to make a new life with Ruth. We have both thought that it would look rather grim to see others, without me, engaged in conquering the summit. And now that the prospect arrives, I want to have a part in the finish.” Thirteen days later he’d made his mind up: “It’s all settled, and I’m to go again. I only hope it is a right decision. It has been a fearful tug. I’ve had to think precisely what I was wanted for.” Also part of the team was recent Oxford graduate Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine (Freddie Fox: Parade’s End, The Three Musketeers), the youngest of the party at 22 and with the least mountaineering experience. Colonel Edward Norton (John Hannah: The Mummy, Four Weddings and a Funeral), an expert climber and Everest veteran, was in charge.
For three weeks they sailed through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to Bombay, crossed the plains of India and the high Himalayan passes into Tibet. After four weeks trekking across the freezing Tibetan desert they finally reached the north slopes of Everest and climbed to the foot of the Rongbuk Glacier. Norton said: “We have reached the Base Camp exactly to plan, with not one sick man, English or Himalayan. The camp is humming as I write.” In a letter to his beloved Ruth, Mallory wrote: “The telegram announcing our success, if we succeed, will precede this letter, I suppose. But it will mention no names. How you will hope that I was one of the conquerors! And I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”...
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Wednesday 29th May
Factual > History > Documentaries
Mothers, Murderers and Mistresses: Empresses of Ancient Rome
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Professor Catharine Edwards explores the story of the remarkable Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus, mother of the emperor Tiberius and a woman whose influence was felt across the Roman world for over 60 years. But as Catharine explains, imperial women who lacked perfect political judgement would end up not as leaders but as victims. Both Augustus's daughter Julia and his granddaughter Agrippina would die miserably in exile.
Factual > History > Politics > Documentaries
The Iraq War
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - Regime Change
The people at the top of the CIA and Saddam's Foreign Minister describe just how the US and Britain got it so wrong about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.
Tony Blair recounts how he flew to President Bush's private retreat at Camp David to go head-to-head with Vice President Dick Cheney. Colin Powell explains how he came to make his disastrous presentation to the United Nations. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw describes how he - and even President Bush himself - tried to persuade Tony Blair that to join in the invasion was political suicide.
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Thursday 30th May
Factual > History
Henry VII: Winter King
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Thomas Penn charts the dark story of the godfather of the Tudors, a man who was never meant to be king but founded the most famous dynasty ever: Henry VII.
Psychology > Human Behaviour
Human Swarm
4Seven, 11:05pm-12:05am
We all like to think of ourselves as individuals, making up our own minds what to do and when to do it. But this eye-opening documentary, presented by Jimmy Doherty, reveals new evidence that suggests that in many ways we actually think and move like members of a herd of animals.
We each leave behind us a vast 'data trail' every time we travel, use our phone or credit card, search or buy online, use social media or visit a supermarket.
The documentary reveals how, by analysing and unlocking this mountain of data, scientists can monitor, predict and even manipulate our actions with amazing precision.
The programme shows how one of the most powerful influences on each of us is the temperature, with the smallest changes affecting us physically and psychologically, without us even being aware of it.
And it shows how individual changes in mood, appetite, behaviour and health can add up to a huge shift in behaviour across the country, with consequences for the health service, energy companies and retailers.
The programme reveals: how a tiny gland in our brains helps to choose our breakfast for us when it's cold; how each one degree drop in the temperature leads to an extra 200 heart attacks; why flu flourishes in winter; how our online searches can help track disease outbreaks; how supermarkets can predict when you will want to have a BBQ; when online dating sites see a 350% spike in traffic; and how sales of swimwear go up by 600% when the sun shines, whatever the temperature.
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Friday 31st May
News > World Affairs
Unreported World: Making Brazil Beautiful
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00pm
Unreported World reports on the huge growth in cosmetic plastic surgery in Brazil.
Reporter Seyi Rhodes and producer Suemay Oram reveal that even poor women living in favelas can achieve the Brazilian body beautiful through subsidised or free cosmetic surgery provided by plastic surgeons who feel all Brazilians have a right to be beautiful, even on the country's Public Health Service.
In Brazil, plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons is not frowned on like it can be in the UK, and having a surgically enhanced body is sometimes seen as a status symbol. The number of surgeries offering cosmetic enhancement has grown by 30 per cent in two years and there are now 10 times more plastic surgeons in Brazil than in the UK. Brazil is second only to the USA in the number of plastic surgery operations carried out each year.
Reasons for surgery vary: from wanting to have a body they feel comfortable with on the beach, to one that they feel will enhance their ability to get a job.
Many women that Rhodes talks to say that in body conscious Brazil, if you don't fit the perception of the perfect body, your chances of career advancement aren't as great.
As well as private operations, plastic surgery is available in Brazilian public hospitals. As in most countries, reconstructive surgery takes precedence, but surgeons also carry out aesthetic procedures.
They also have a very wide definition of what is reconstructive. Women who've had children can apply for a 'reconstructive' tummy tuck. Or a woman whose small breasts are causing her 'psychological distress' could have a breast augmentation for free.
Hospital administrator Karen Da Silva Chaves is being given a tummy tuck following the birth of her son, so that she can wear a bikini again. The operation is free on the Brazilian health service.
The team meet 87-year-old professor and former surgeon Dr Ivo Pitanguy. He pioneered the increase in plastic surgery treatment for poorer Brazilians and his organisation runs Santa Casa hospital's plastic surgery ward.
Patients make a 'donation' to the hospital, the amount of which depends on their chosen surgery and their earnings. Those who can't afford to pay but are deemed 'in need' of surgery can get it for free...
History > Documentaries
Britain's Stone Age Tsunami
4 Seven, 8:00-9:00pm
Tony Robinson reveals astonishing new evidence that shows how, 8000 years ago, a huge tsunami swamped the east coast of Britain.
The new research also explains the tsunami's cause, and transforms our understanding of the people whose lives it devastated.
Like recent tsunamis in the Indian Ocean and Japan, Britain's tsunami was a phenomenally destructive force, with waves as high as 10 metres in many places.
But new research on the people who faced those waves has forced a new appreciation of the impact of the wave's destruction.
For years, these Mesolithic communities were thought to be primitive hunter-gatherers. But through remarkable new archaeological excavation, Tony discovers that people in Britain at that time were living comfortable, settled lives in their own houses, with varied diets and sophisticated skills.
The tsunami didn't just scare a few cavemen; it swamped a civilisation.
It was also the most dramatic incident in a long and volatile epoch of climate change that eventually separated Britain from continental Europe, and set the shape of our current coastline.
In 6000 BC, Britain was still joined to the rest of Europe by Doggerland, an area of dry land the size of Germany, where thousands of Mesolithic people lived.
In the programme, scientists take Tony on an astonishing virtual journey through Doggerland's rich and plentiful landscape, which was to be destroyed by the tsunami and then persistent flooding as the world's ice melted.
And they also reveal how the tsunami was caused by melting ice, triggering a chain reaction that left a trail of destruction from the top of these islands to the bottom.
Factual > History
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - The Common People
Dr. Ian Mortimer offers a unique travel guide to the world of Queen Elizabeth I. In a lavish and ground-breaking new way of exploring history, Ian takes us on a present-tense journey through this golden age of English history.
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Wednesday 15 May 2013
Off-air recordings for week 18-24 May 2013
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 18th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & The Media > Documentaries
Sincerely, F Scott Fitzgerald: A Culture Show Special
BBC2, 8:30-9:00pm
As Baz Lurhmann’s opulent version of The Great Gatsby, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, opens in cinemas, US writer Jay McInerney picks over the life of its author, F Scott Fitzgerald, mostly through a huge cache of his letters.
Jay Gatsby, a fabulously wealthy bootlegger who threw parties at his mansion as he pined for the love of his life, was a largely “reported figure” in the novel. But, says McInerney, Fitzgerald poured much of himself into his flawed hero and cannibalised his own tumultuous marriage to the troubled Zelda. Perhaps most interesting are Fitzgerald’s letters to his daughter Scottie, which sound both hectoring and affectionate.
Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby has just been released in cinemas, with Leonardo DiCaprio as the millionaire playboy of the title. In this documentary, novelist Jay McInerney explores the life and writing of Fitzgerald through the letters he sent to editors, publishers, lovers and friends, revealing the inner thoughts of a man whose real life was never far from the fiction he wrote.
Factual > Science & Nature >Documentaries
Swarm: Nature's Incredible Invasions
BBC4, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/2 - When World's Collide
This documentary reveals the awe-inspiring world of animal swarms, discovering what happens when superswarms invade people's lives and, using the latest camera techniques, going to the heart of the swarm to reveal how the creatures therein view our world.
Real-life footage from camcorders and mobile phones captures the amazing impact they can have. Killer bees mount an attack on an international football match in Costa Rica; in the US the Illinois River boils with leaping silver carp, an alien species that has hijacked the river, smashing into boats and injuring people.
In South Australia a sea of mice raids farms, consuming and destroying in their millions on a scale that defies belief. The largest swarm on Earth erupts from Lake Victoria: trillions of flies blanket villages but the locals have learnt to turn the swarm into a highly nutritious fly burger. In Rome, cameras fly alongside ten million starlings, the largest swarm in Europe. Their mesmeric waves stop many residents in their tracks, but as they roost they smother the city in tons of excrement.
One man has learnt to control the ultimate swarm. He has become their 'queen bee' with startling results, learning to control what most people fear and to understand one of the most incredible forces of nature.
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Sunday 19th May
Factual > History > Pets & Animals > Documentaries
Ice Age Giants
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Land of the Sabre-Tooth
Professor Alice Roberts journeys 40,000 years back in time on the trail of the great beasts of the Ice Age. Drawing on the latest scientific detective work and a dash of graphic wizardry, Alice brings the Ice Age giants back to life.
The Ice Age odyssey begins in the 'land of the sabre-tooth' - North America, a continent that was half covered by ice that was up to two miles thick. Yet this frozen land also boasts the most impressive cast of Ice Age giants in the world.
High in a cave in the Grand Canyon, Alice discovers the mummified poo of the loveable, grizzly bear-sized Shasta ground sloth. Lying in the sands of Arizona are the shelled remains of a glyptodon, surely the weirdest mammal that ever lived. On the coastal plains of California, Alice encounters the vast Columbian mammoth, an animal far larger than any elephant today.
These leviathans all have one thing in common: they were stalked by the meanest big cat that ever prowled the Earth, armed with seven-inch teeth and hunting in packs - Smilodon fatalis, the sabre-toothed cat
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Life Stories > Documentaries
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Documentary telling the gripping and shocking story of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld, who survived two world wars to become one of the world's most highly-paid fashion photographers and a key influence on the development of photography as an art form. Yet after a mysterious death in Rome in 1969 his name is little-known today, the reasons for which lie in his unconventional lifestyle.
The first ever film about his life and work uses exclusive access to Blumenfeld's extensive archive of stunning photographs, fashion films, home-movies and self-portraits to tell of a man obsessed by the pursuit of beautiful women, but also by the endless possibilities of photography itself.
With contributions from leading photographers Rankin, Nick Knight and Solve Sundsbo and 82-year-old supermodel Carmen Dell'Orefice, it uncovers the richly complex story of one of the 20th century's most original photographic artists.
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Monday 20th May
Factual > Science & Nature > Environment
World's Weirdest Weather
4Seven, 1:30-2:30am
Alex explores strange weather associated with fire, from firenadoes to upward lightning, lightning created in volcanic explosions and raging bush fires called firestorms; as well as exploring how lightning storms rage on planets millions of miles from Earth.
Lightning strikes Earth 45 times a second. Britain gets around 300,000 strikes, with between 30 and 60 people being hit.
The programme hears remarkable first-hand accounts from those who have survived lightning strikes, and learns about the strange effects lightning can have on a human body.
Alex travels to Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the lightning capital of the world, where there are near-constant lightning storms with thousands of strikes every night.
Footage captured by the public on smartphones and digital cameras reveals the many varied forms lightning can take, from St Elmo's fire coursing through the fuselage of a commercial airliner, to ball lightning high in the sky and lightning inside a snow storm.
Alex examines the terrifying spectre of a firenado, a catastrophic combination of a tornado and a wild fire, a swirling pillar of fire that can reach 800 degrees centigrade; as well as firestorms: a wild fire so powerful it creates its own weather, including lightning bolts that set even more fires.
He also investigates fire from within the planet and learns how a deadly combination of weather and volcanic eruptions created a lethal sulphur cloud that left a trail of destruction as it travelled over Europe.
TV weatherman Alex Beresford explores the mysteries behind some of the world's most bizarre weather, hearing compelling eyewitness accounts from those who've experienced these climatic extremes.
Alex uses dynamic demonstrations to explain the science behind some of the most freakish events on earth, revealing how our weather is even more surprising, weirder and more vibrant than we imagine.
Factual > History >Documentaries
The Flying Archaeologist
BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 4/4 - The Thames' Secret War
Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over the Thames to uncover new discoveries about World War 1. A whole network of trenches has been discovered on the Hoo peninsula. Invisible from the ground, they were recently found from aerial images of the area next to the former Chattenden Barracks.
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Tuesday 21st May
Factual > History > Geography > Documentaries
Town with Nicholas Crane
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/4, series 2 - Oban
Make no mistake. This is Coast, just without Neil Oliver and Miranda Krestovnikoff, and not always with sea views. Geographer Nicholas Crane is exploring four of our “forgotten” towns to find out what they can teach us about urban living. He starts in Oban, a bustling ferry port clinging to the western side of Scotland that most people pass by with barely a sideways glance.
They don’t know what they’re missing, judging by Crane’s enthusiasm for the hilltop tower inspired by the Colosseum, for “coasteering” (scrambling over rocks without getting washed away) and for the cattle market that provides “a break from island life… and where the camaraderie matters as much as the cheque book”. The other Towns in the series are Huddersfield, Enniskillen and Saffron Walden.
Geographer and adventurer Nicholas Crane explores four more towns around the UK, looking at the secrets of their survival, the reasons for their enduring appeal and what they reveal about the future of urban living. He begins with the port of Oban in Argyll and Bute, examining the town's surprising role in the Cold War, visiting one of Scotland's oldest whisky distilleries and meeting artist John Lowrie Morrison at his studio.
Factual > Life Stories > Documentaries
Love and Death in City Hall
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
A heartwarming and heartbreaking tale about how Belfast people experience the biggest things in life - birth, marriage and death. Located largely within the majestic surrounds of the register office of Belfast City Hall.
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Wednesday 22nd May
Factual > Life Stories > Money
Living with Poverty: Mind the Gap
BBC1 (London), 11:05-11:35pm
Only a dozen tube stops separate Mayfair and West Ham, but there is a staggering 21-year drop in life expectancy between these two neighbourhoods. 'Mind the Gap' takes a journey across the London Underground network to examine what life is like at these two extremes through the lives of the locals.
Factual > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries
Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm, 4/4 - The First Anglo-Saxons
Julian Richards returns to the excavation of two early Anglo-Saxon cemetries to explore the mystery of the Anglo-Saxon invasions that began after the fall of the Roman Empire. In particular, the rich burial of a warrior and his horse offers up fresh clues to some of the very first pioneers.
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Documentaries
Great Artists in Their Own Words
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - But is it Art? (1976-1993)
Last of a three-part series which unlocks the BBC archives to tell the story of modern art in the words of the artists themselves looks at how radical late 20th-century artists took on centuries of art history and won - from the notorious 'bricks' of Carl Andre to the 'living sculptures' Gilbert and George, from the shockingly explicit photography of Robert Mapplethorpe to the powerful nudes of Lucian Freud and sensational pickled sharks of Damien Hirst.
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Thursday 23rd May
Drama > Biographical > Historical > Factual > History
The Last Days of Anne Boleyn
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Drama documentary exploring the dramatic downfall and execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536.
Documentaries
The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
In 2010 Telford police allowed cameras to start filming what was to become one of the biggest child sex abuse cases in the UK.
The investigation, Operation Chalice, eventually encompassed over 100 victims, and around 200 suspected perpetrators.
The Hunt for Britain's Sex Gangs follows - with unprecedented access - a live police investigation, showing just how difficult it is to secure justice for victims of sexual abuse, especially when some girls were just 11 when they were first abused.
Gaining the trust of victims - who as a result of the grooming process, don't see themselves as victims - is key to the success of the case, but it takes months for the police to win their trust and keep them on board as they prepare for the harrowing process of going to court.
As the police work with the victims, they begin to understand a vicious cycle of grooming, which starts with flattery and friendship, then moves on to a more overtly sexual relationship, and finally becomes exploitative as the groomers pass the girls around their networks of friends and family for sex.
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Friday 24th May
News > World Affairs
Unreported World - Yemen: Death Row Teenagers
Channel 4, BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and director Daniel Bogado travel to Yemen to reveal the scores of young men locked up in prisons and awaiting execution for crimes they are accused of committing while they were children. And they meet the lawyer who, in a miscarriage of justice, was sentenced to death himself at the age of 16 and who is now on a mission to save others who should never have been given the death penalty.
The Unreported World team accompanies Hafedh Ibrahim as he enters Taiz prison to meet a new young client. It's the same prison where Hafedh was once held on death row and where he was marched, handcuffed, from the cells to the execution spot and told to lie down on the sand ready to be executed. Hafedh tells Guru-Murthy how, according to Yemeni law, as a juvenile he should never have faced the death penalty.
His campaigning from inside prison paid off. He describes hearing the phone call coming in to cancel his execution three minutes before he was due to be shot. Yemen has one of the world's highest rates of gun ownership. In this tribal society boys are given guns and expected to become men. The prisons are full of young prisoners convicted of murder. According to Yemeni law, offenders under 18 cannot be sentenced to death. But most people here don't have documents proving their age so juveniles are often mistaken as adults. That problem is intensified by the fact Yemeni culture has tended to treat boys as adults at the age of 15.
Hafedh is in the prison to meet Abdul Rahman, a boy accused of murder. Abdul hasn't been tried, but has already been in prison for nearly two years. His sister claims that he killed her husband. Abdul says that he's being framed and in any case, he was 16 when the death took place. Hafedh has Abdul's birth certificate, which he says should prove that he's telling the truth...
Factual > History >Documentaries
Henry VIII's Enforcer: The Rise of the Thomas Cromwell
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Drama > Biographical > Historical > Factual > History
Thomas Cromwell has gone down in history as one of the most corrupt and manipulative ruffians ever to hold power in this country. A commoner turned Chief Minister, his ruthless pursuit of power and money have captured the public’s imagination for centuries, painting a dark portrait of a merciless politician who destroyed people and institutions to please and enrich his king.
But Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch (How God Made The English, A History Of Christianity), reveals another side. He argues that Thomas Cromwell was a principled and pioneering statesman: an idealist and a revolutionary, whose radical evangelism laid the foundations for the modern British state.
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Wednesday 8 May 2013
Off-air recordings for week 11-17 May 2013
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 11th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries
United States of Television: America in Primetime
BBC2, 10:30-11:30pm, 4/4 - The Crusader
Alan Yentob concludes the series with a look at the crusading heroes who seek truth, protect the innocent and do the right thing - the cops, the cowboys, the doctors and the spooks.
The line separating the hero from the villain has often been a fine one in American history, and the ambiguities that lie at the heart of heroism have inspired some of primetime's most popular and long-running shows, including MASH, The X Files, 24, NYPD Blue and The Wire.
From the white-hat versus black-hat pieties of the 1950s to the gritty dilemmas of the post 9/11 world, this episode talks to the stars, creators, writers and producers who have tried to 'do the right thing' for audiences. There are interviews with Hugh Laurie (House), Alan Alda (Hawkeye in MASH), Gillian Anderson (Scully in The X-Files), Dennis Franz (Sipowicz in NYPD Blue) and Michael K Williams (Omar in The Wire).
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Sunday 12th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > History > Documentaries
Roundhead or Cavalier: Which One are You?
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
In the middle of the 17th century, Britain was devastated by a civil war that divided the nation into two tribes - the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. In this programme, celebrities and historians reveal that modern Britain is still defined by the battle between the two tribes. The Cavaliers represent a Britain of panache, pleasure and individuality. They are confronted by the Roundheads, who stand for modesty, discipline, equality and state intervention.
The ideas which emerged 350 years ago shaped our democracy, civil liberties and constitution. They also create a cultural divide that influences how we live, what we wear and even what we eat and drink. Individuals usually identify with one tribe or the other, but sometimes they need some elements of the enemy's identity - David Cameron seeks a dash of the down-to-earth Roundhead, while Ed Miliband looks for some Cavalier charisma.
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Monday 13th May
Factual > History > Documentaries
The Flying Archaeologist
BBC4, 8:00-8:30pm, 3/4 - Hadrian's Wall: Life on the Frontier
Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over Hadrian's Wall to reveal a new view of its history. The first full aerial survey of Hadrian's Wall has helped uncover new evidence about the people who once lived there. Carried out over the last few years by English Heritage, it is allowing archaeologists to reinterpret the wall. Across the whole landscape hundreds of sites of human occupation have been discovered, showing that people were living here in considerable numbers. Their discoveries are suggesting that far from being a barren military landscape, the whole area was richly populated before during and after the wall was built. There is also exciting new evidence that the Romans were here earlier than previously thought.
Factual > Crime & Justice > Documentaries
The Prisoners
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3
Filmed over a year, this final episode follows a group of repeat offenders from Holloway and Pentonville prisons. Chloe, in Holloway, has a cross-prison relationship with her fiance and co-defendant Michael in Pentonville. They want to build a better life together on release, but Chloe gets out first and has to face the world outside alone. Ben deliberately offended to get into jail and get help, but can he stay clean when released? And can Holloway's Jayde finally break her re-offending cycle?
Factual > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries
Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 2/2
Julian Richards returns to the excavation of two burials from the Stone Age - the grave of an entire Neolithic family in Dorset and a tomb on Orkney that is helping to reveal some strange and unexpected burial rites from over 5,000 years ago.
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Tuesday 14th May
Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries
Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 8/8
This episode takes a look at the country's single biggest killer, heart disease. Every day 282 people will have a heart attack and 200 will die. In Manchester, a specialist team race to treat a steady stream of heart attack victims, some of whom have a 20 year history of heart disease. In Liverpool six-month-old Kyran undergoes open heart surgery to correct a defect first detected in the womb and in Yorkshire, air ambulance paramedics attempt to resuscitate an 80-year-old mechanic who has collapsed while working on a neighbour's car.
Despite improvements in treatment, our increasingly sedentary lifestyle combined with an ageing population will only add to the pressure on the NHS, a dilemma playing out across the whole organisation as demands increase and the money to pay for it doesn't.
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Wednesday 15th May
Factual > History > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries
Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm - 3/4 - Sacred Women of the Iron Age
Archaeologist Julian Richards revisits some of his most important digs to discover how science, conservation and new finds have changed people's understanding of ancient history. His journey continues at the excavations of two vastly different Iron Age women - the possible sacrifice of a teenage girl from the Cotswolds, and the chariot burial of a queen from 400BC whose well preserved possessions are leading to astonishing conclusions about belief in early times.
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries
Great Artists in Their Own Words
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3
Footage from the BBC's archive collections is unlocked to reveal the story of the birth of modern art, as told by those who created this cultural revolution. The second episode looks at the tortured images of Francis Bacon, born of the horror of the Second World War, the pop art of Richard Hamilton, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol and the vibrant paintings of David Hockney. Featuring contributions by Joan Bakewell, Antony Gormley and Waldemar Januszczak.
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Thursday 16th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Factual > History > Documentaries
Archaeology: A Secret History
BBC4, 10:30-11:30pm, 3/3 - Power of the Past
News > Current Affairs
Tonight: America and its Guns
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
Reporter Robert Moore travels across the US investigating the prevalence of guns, talking to owners about why they have them and why they would never give them up. He also meets families who have suffered the consequences of firearms being so ingrained in society, and the programme features an interview with a man whose son accidentally shot his little sister.
Crime > Murder > Bereavement > Psychology > Counselling
Cutting Edge: The Murder Workers
Channel 4, 9:00-10:25pm
The Murder Workers is a powerful and insightful Cutting Edge documentary exploring a side of murder that most people know very little about. It follows members of Victim Support’s National Homicide team as they work closely with families who have been bereaved by murder or manslaughter.
The Murder Workers offer practical and emotional support for families at different stages of bereavement from the initial shock right up until the steps needed to start re-building their lives again. The families are often thrown into a world of police investigations forced to navigate the deeply confusing world of the criminal system and it is the Murder Worker’s responsibility to guide them through this difficult time.
When others don’t know what to say or how they can help, it’s Murder Workers Dave, Alli and Carol who step in to help with funeral arrangements, apply for compensation, seek specialist help, close down bank accounts, cancel booked holidays or be there when their homes are turned into crime scenes; but most importantly, they are a shoulder to cry on. They are there to fight the family’s corner and whether its humour or a hug that's required, they know the right thing to say – they have an extraordinary capacity to go into the unknown and alleviate some of the stress put on the families.
The Murder Workers also goes into the lives and homes of those recently bereaved to learn about the impact of homicide. Marie is an extraordinary woman with an inner fight and superior strength preparing to come face-to-face with the men accused of killing her son Lee. Elsewhere, Jackie who was getting ready for her retirement now has her hands and house full of young children. Her three grandchildren, aged five, eight and thirteen years old moved in with her after their father killed their mother, who was Jackie's daughter. She is now battling to become the children’s legal guardian.
Directed by Jessie Versluys – who produced the award-winning Katie: My Beautiful Face – this fascinating one-off Cutting Edge documentary goes behind the headlines to observe the extraordinary strength needed to fight, survive and heal the traumatic events of a murder from the eyes of The Murder Workers.
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Friday 17th May
News > World Affairs
Unreported World
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00pm, 6/8 - Bangladesh Women's Driving School
Bangladesh is one of the most dangerous places in the world to drive a car. Reporter Clemency Burton-Hill and director Elizabeth C Jones take to the roads of Dhaka with a group of young women who are learning to be professional drivers against extraordinary odds: on top of dreadful drivers, teeming traffic and huge potholes, these learners are battling entrenched social taboos as they try to enter a profession almost entirely dominated by men.
Inside the residential driving school, the young women - many of whom have come from difficult circumstances - live, sleep, eat and study together, swapping life stories and forging friendships. Their driving tuition, both in the classrooms and on the roads, is intense: 8am to 6pm every day except Fridays.
Dhaka has appalling traffic and more than 20,000 people die on Bangladesh's roads every year. Before the women get anywhere near the wheel, however, one of the first issues they are taught about is 'gender sensitivity'. As female drivers, prejudice, discrimination and abuse are as likely to await them as potholes, traffic jams and exhaust fumes.
Twenty-year-old Mafuza was forced to leave school when she was 14 and marry a man she'd never met. Having divorced her husband after he allegedly mistreated her, she has retreated back to her village with her two-year-old daughter.
Nobody else in her village drives a car, but she dreams of becoming a professional driver to provide her parents with much more income. She also hopes to be an inspiration to other women in the village by proving that women - even young, divorced women - can be equal to men, and can forge an independent livelihood despite the prevailing social taboos.
Twenty-one-year-old Konika claims she was so badly beaten by her husband that she lost her baby during the ninth month of her pregnancy. Now divorced, Konika is making good progress, but worries that she can't stop her legs from shaking whenever she drives.
Factual > Science & Nature > Documentaries
Leopards: 21st Century Cats - A Natural World Special
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Conservationist Rom Whitaker discovered a leopard had moved on to his farm near Chennai and decided to investigate India's complex relationship with the big cats and find out why hundreds of the animals are being stoned, trapped or shot. He examines why such a large predator is still relatively common in a country of 1.2 billion people and explores the reasons behind some leopards becoming man-eaters.
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Wednesday 1 May 2013
Off-air recordings for week 4-10 May 2013
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 4th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Documentaries
United States of Television: America in Primetime
BBC2, 10:15-11:15pm, 3/4 - The Independent Woman
In the third programme in this star-studded series that examines the social history of America through the prism of popular primetime TV shows, Alan Yentob considers the remarkable journey made by women in the 'United States of Television'.
Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie), Roseanne Barr (Roseanne), Mary Tyler Moore (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex In The City), Sandra Oh (Grey's Anatomy) and many more stars, creators, writers and producers reflect on the dramatic social changes that transformed the homemaking, apple pie-baking CEO of the kitchen sink of the 1950s into the 'independent woman' of today, struggling with the push and pull of having it all.
Dependent on advertising dollars controlled by conservative corporations, mainstream primetime television was slow to reflect the revolution that was taking place in the economic, sexual and domestic situation of women in the America of the 60s and 70s, but into the breach opened up by non-conformists like Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy) came other unforgettable characters who changed the way that women were perceived and how women were expected to behave: Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown, Roseanne and not forgetting Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte of Sex and the City fame/notoriety.
Today, the independent women of primetime have to struggle with challenges that Donna Reed, the perfectionist queen of 1950s TV, could not have dreamed of - careers, childcare, infidelity, drug addiction (or in the case of Nancy Botwin of Weeds, drug dealing) and, of course, the eternal questions of love - where to find it, how to keep it and at what cost.
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Sunday 5th May
Factual > History > Documentaries
Timewatch: Stonehenge
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
An investigation into a radical theory that Stonehenge, far from being a place of burial as is commonly assumed, was in fact a place of healing - a Bronze Age Lourdes. The investigation takes in forensic testing of bones excavated over the past decades and hard-won permission for the first dig in 50 years at the Henge, watched live online by millions of viewers around the world. Does the theory of the healing stones bear up to modern-day forensic science?
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Monday 6th May
Factual > History > Documentaries
The Flying Archaeologist
BBC4, 8:30-9:00pm, 2/4
Archaeologist Ben Robinson flies over the Broads where aerial photos have discovered a staggering 945 previously unknown ancient sites. Many are making historians rethink the history of the area
The fate of the Roman town of Caistor St Edmund has puzzled archaeologists for decades. It's long been a mystery why the centre never became a modern town. Now archaeologists have discovered a key piece of evidence. And near Ormseby the first proof of Bronze Age settlement in the east of England has been revealed.
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Tuesday 7th May
Factual > Health & Wellbeing > Documentaries
Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 7/8
This episode takes a look at the NHS outside of the hospital environment, and through a vast patchwork of experiences reveals the health system's role in British lives from cradle to grave.
Featuring a Yorkshire District Nurse who spends her day changing dressings and tubes for elderly patients, a maverick GP in Everton who takes in addicts and abusive patients who have been rejected by other surgeries, and a pair of West Midlands paramedics who compare their nightshift to that of a mini-cab service. In London, the air ambulance crew rush to the scene of two serious accidents, whilst in Birmingham, a medical student makes his 16th sperm donation.
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Wednesday 8th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Documentaries
Great Artists in Their Own Words
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
In the first episode of the series, this programme unlocks the BBC archives to tell the story of the birth of modern art, in the words of the artists who created a cultural revolution - from the startling innovations of Picasso to the explosion of colour in the paintings of Matisse, to LS Lowry's industrial cityscapes and the often shocking work of surrealists like Max Ernst, Magritte and Dali.
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Thursday 9th May
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > History >Documentaries
Archaeology: A Secret History
BBC4, 10:50-11:50pm, 2/3 - The Search for Civilisation
Archaeologist Richard Miles presents a series charting the history of the breakthroughs and watersheds in our long quest to understand our ancient past. He shows how discoveries in the 18th and 19th centuries overturned ideas of when and where civilisation began, as empires competed to literally 'own' the past.
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