Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence
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Sunday 11th August
Factual > Homes & Gardens > Science & Nature > Nature & Environment
The Wonder of Weeds
BBC4, 7:00-8:00pm
Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins celebrates the humble and sometimes hated plants we call weeds. He discovers that there is no such thing as a weed, botanically speaking, and that in fact what we call a weed has changed again and again over the last three hundred years. Chris uncovers the story of our changing relationship with weeds - in reality, the story of the battle between wilderness and civilisation. He finds out how weeds have been seen as beautiful and useful in the past, and sees how their secrets are being unlocked today in order to transform our crops.
Finally, Chris asks whether, in our quest to eliminate Japanese Knotweed or Rhododendron Ponticum, we are really engaged in an arms race we can never win. We remove weeds from our fields and gardens at our peril.
Factual > Science & Nature > Nature & Environment > Documentaries
Polar Bears and Grizzlies: Bears on top of the World
BBC4, 10:30-11:20pm
Natural history film comparing the fortunes of polar bears with grizzlies by following two families in the wild. As the Arctic warms up, the creatures' habitats are beginning to overlap, causing the animals to compete for food and space, and in some cases interbreed.
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Monday 12th August
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Architecture > Documentaries
Dreaming The Impossible: Unbuilt Britain
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3 - Glasshouses
Architectural investigator Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner reveals the fascinating and dramatic stories behind some of the grandest designs never built. She begins in 1855, when visionary designer Joseph Paxton put forward ambitious plans for the Great Victorian Way, which promised to alleviate congestion in London by encircling the city centre with a 10-mile-long glass structure containing shops, houses, hotels and eight railway lines.
Factual > History > Documentaries
Benefits Britain 1949
4Seven, 11:05pm-12:05am, 1/3
Everyone's got an opinion about the welfare state, whether we're bemoaning 'scroungers' or pointing out how it's failed the vulnerable, but there's no consensus on how it can be fixed.
In this bold piece of living history, current benefits claimants volunteer to live for a week by the rules of 1949 to explore how our safety net should work.
This first episode looks at how the state should support disabled, long-term sick and elderly people.
Craig, who's 24, finds that being born with spina bifida doesn't entitle him to any benefits under the 1949 rules. But the post-war welfare state has another solution: it offers him training and work experience, and it has the power to force employers to take on workers with disabilities.
Craig has applied for hundreds of jobs in the past four years without success. Will his 1949 work experience at a call centre be a turning point?
Melvyn, who's 71, hands over his 2013 pension, only to find that in 1949 he receives just £38.48 (the precise sum he'd have got then, adjusted for inflation). From this, he has to cover his food, bills and transport for the week.
Initially he appears to be coping well, but is soon plunged into debt and is forced to pawn his grandfather's watch. What would the 1949 system have done with a pensioner who was failing to cope?
Karen, who's 54, is on sickness benefit. Having worked all her life, she feels she should be entitled to greater support, rather than the government trying to take away more of her benefits.
2013 has judged her eligible for state aid, but will 1949 take as sympathetic a view of her conditions?
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Tuesday 13th August
Factual > Science & Nature > Science & Technology
Horizon: Monitor Me
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:20am
Dr Kevin Fong explores a medical revolution that promises to help us live longer, healthier lives. Inspired by the boom in health-related apps and gadgets, it's all about novel ways we can monitor ourselves around the clock. How we exercise, how we sleep, even how we sit.
Some doctors are now prescribing apps the way they once prescribed pills. Kevin meets the pioneers of this revolution. From the England Rugby 7s team, whose coach knows more about his players' health than a doctor would, to the most monitored man in the world who diagnosed a life threatening disease from his own data, without going to the doctor.
Factual > Crime > Documentaries
On the Run
ITV1, 9:00-10:00pm
This new documentary features a manhunt attempting to track down three wanted criminals so they can be brought to justice.
Presenters Mark Williams-Thomas and Natasha Kaplinsky show how their undercover team trace and with the help of the police, apprehend fugitives who are running from the law. On The Run includes high-octane scenes as the team and police units close in on the three wanted men.
One is a sex offender, one a violent fugitive, another is a burglar and car thief. They have gone to ground after fleeing outstanding arrest warrants, jumping bail or breaking their licence conditions. Using a variety of undercover stings and subterfuge, this programme shows in vivid detail how these criminals are traced and how police go about catching them.
It also brings into sharp focus the difficulty in arresting a wanted British criminal in Portugal - even though he is the subject of an international arrest warrant.
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Wednesday 14th August
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Documentaries > Factual > History
Lost Treasures: How Houghton Got its Art Back
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
Dan Cruickshank reveals the story behind Robert Walpole's art collection, which was sold to Russia in the 1770s, but has returned to hang in its original home of Houghton Hall in Norfolk for the summer. Generally considered to be Britain's first prime minister, Walpole brought together some of the finest 18th-century works in the Western world.
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts
Magazines & Reviews
The Culture Show at Edinburgh: Leonardo da Vinci - The Anatomist
BBC2, 10:00-10:30pm
Art critic Alastair Sooke views The Mechanics of Man, a new exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings at the Queen's Gallery in the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Alastair compares the sketches to the state-of-the art modern medical imagery also on display, to examine just how close the Renaissance master's work was to the real thing.
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Thursday 15th August
Documentaries
How to Get a Council House
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3
This episode focuses on Tower Hamlets' Homeless service, the A & E of the council's housing department. Every year, 3300 people come here claiming to be in urgent need of a new home.
The range of stories is unexpected and heart-breaking, from a woman claiming she accidentally burnt her house down with a pound shop lighter, to a mother who claims her son is sleeping in a cupboard and a father who brings in his disabled son to announce he is evicting him.
Surprisingly, if you are homeless in Britain today you may not be entitled to any help at all. Local councils have a legal duty to find housing for some people, but only if they fall into a priority group.
With a severe shortage of council housing, they are forced to place those who do qualify for housing into expensive temporary accommodation and private rented flats.
It is up to a team of over-stretched housing officers to work out who is and isn't telling the truth about their situation, who should be given help and who should be turned away.
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