*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 17th August
Factual > Politics > Documentaries
Thatcher: The Downing Street Years
BBC2, 8:10-9:10pm
Award-winning four-part documentary series, examining Margaret Thatcher's 11 years as Prime Minister. The first programme looks at how she rejected the postwar consensus that had governed the country for more than 30 years, and came into conflict with trade unions, the old establishment and even members of her own cabinet. Yet even as the country moved into a crippling recession, the Prime Minister refused to make a U-turn in policy.
Religions > Superstitions > Beliefs > Documentaries
A Very British Witchcraft
More4, 9:00-10:00pm
The extraordinary story of Britain's fastest-growing religious group - the modern pagan witchcraft of Wicca - and of its creator, an eccentric Englishman called Gerald Gardner.
Historian and leading expert in Pagan studies Professor Ronald Hutton explores Gardner's story and experiences first-hand Wicca's growing influence throughout Britain today.
Born of a nudist colony in 1930s Dorset, Wicca rapidly grew from a small New Forest coven to a worldwide religion in the space of just 70 years.
It's a journey that takes in tales of naked witches casting spells to ward off Hitler, tabloid hysteria about human sacrifices and Gerald Gardner himself appearing on Panorama.
Religions > Superstitions > Beliefs > Documentaries
Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters
More4, 10:00-11:05pm
Featuring dramatic reconstructions, the opening programme examines our fascination with and terror of dead bodies.
People in the past believed that even in death a body retained some vital force, and that the dead could rise from the grave to cause havoc among the living. Why did they believe this? What powers did they believe the dead had? And what did they do about it?
Tony's journey takes him on a fascinating and sometimes humorous tour of some of the darkest recesses of the ancient mind, and brings him face to face with a plague-breathing zombie, a dead body that seems alive three weeks after it died, and the English monarchs who ate the bodies of their subjects.
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Monday 18th August
Documentaries > Science and Nature > Diseases > Medicine
Ade Adepitan: Journey of a Lifetime
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
'Making this film has changed my life. It was always very personal territory for me. When the polio virus attacked me as a baby in Nigeria, it took away any chance of me being able to walk.'
Ade Adepitan, Paralympic medal-winner and presenter of Channel 4's Bafta Award-winning Paralympics coverage, was inspired to return to the land of his birth to find out why it remains one of three places on Earth where children are still contracting polio.
What he found challenged, shocked, frightened and inspired him by turn, as he travelled from the commercial centre of Lagos in the south to the dangerous, violent north, where health workers risk their lives in an attempt to complete one of most ambitious health campaigns in history.
Ade inspires others along the way, as he joins in a game of para-soccer under a flyover in Lagos, holds a young victim in a remote township, and then, with a local activist, galvanises the biggest march of polio victims in years, in the town of Sokoto.
He joins hundreds of men and women, some of whom are usually hidden away in their homes, as they take over the main street on their primitive wheelchairs, and on skateboards and crutches, leaving Ade exhausted but jubilant.
'I can't get over how motivated these people are,' he says. 'Every step must be painful. But they've still got a smile on their face.' Ade discovers the toxic mix of religion, superstition and suspicion of the outsider, the so called 'White Witch', that has made the task of eradication so difficult.
He feels powerless as he meets the parents who have made the tragic decisions that resulted in their children not being vaccinated and becoming 'crippled': a word he is happy to use in this context.
But this is not just a local battle. Polio is a virulent virus. Unless the combined forces of state and local leaders can be brought together for the final push, other countries that are now free can easily be re-infected and decades of work could be undone.
Factual > Science & Nature > Science & Technology > Documentaries
Horizon: Defeating the Hackers
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
Exploring the murky and fast-paced world of the hackers out to steal money and identities and wreak havoc with people's online lives, and the scientists who are joining forces to help defeat them.
Horizon meets the two men who uncovered the world's first cyber weapon, the pioneers of what is called ultra paranoid computing, and the computer expert who worked out how to hack into cash machines.
Documentaries
Benefits Britain 1949
4Seven, 11:05pm-12:05am, 1/3
The second episode follows three claimants as they give up their 2013 entitlement to council housing and agree to be reassessed and rehoused according to 1949 rules.
In 1949 it wasn't about how much you needed a house, but whether you were deemed suitable to deserve one.
Twenty-five-year-old single mum Nichola and her two young daughters are top of the housing priority list in 2013, but because she is unmarried she would never have qualified for a council house in 1949.
They are evicted from their council flat and have to fend for themselves. Nichola finds the judgemental 1949 attitude towards women who have children out of wedlock challenging, and thinks she might have made different life decisions if she had lived them.
Patson arrived in the UK in 2002, fleeing violence in Zimbabwe. As an asylum seeker with unlimited right to remain in the UK, he currently claims Jobseeker's Allowance, but feels that the 2013 system does little to help the unemployed back to work. There was work for all in 1949 and Patson is allocated a job at a farm.
He's given an accommodation voucher for a migrant workers hostel, but institutional racism was rife in 1949 and he is turned away at the hostel door. Patson realises that the 1949 system did little to support immigrants, and he's forced to seek the generosity of fellow immigrants.
Matt and Heidi live in an untidy and chaotic three-bed council house. In 1949 unsuitable tenants would have been threatened with eviction, but such was the state's commitment to preserving and promoting the family unit, that Matt and Heidi are offered the chance of 'rehabilitation' and are taken to a rehabilitation house where they are taught how to cook, clean and behave.
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Tuesday 19th August
Crime > Criminal Psychology > Documentaries
The Devil's Disciple: Born to Kill?
Channel 5, 2/6 - 8:00-9:00pm
Documentary profile of Patrick Mackay, once dubbed the most dangerous man in Britain. In the mid 1970s, London and the south east was gripped by a series of bizarre murders. The last was the most horrific of all - a Catholic priest found floating in a bath of his own blood, bludgeoned to death with an axe. With insights into his childhood and from those who encountered him, experts attempt to unravel if Patrick Mackay was born to kill.
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Documentaries
Perspectives - Lenny Henry: Finding Shakespeare
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm
Lenny Henry explores his changing relationship with the works of Shakespeare. Growing up in the West Midlands, the comedian found the plays boring, irrelevant and inaccessible, but after appearing on a Radio 4 programme about the Bard he was offered the chance to take the title role in a production of Othello in 2009, and has since appeared in The Comedy of Errors at the National Theatre. Lenny joins forces with a rapper, an Oxford don, the mentor who prepared him to play Othello and actors Dominic West and Adrian Lester to try to show a class of London schoolchildren how Shakespeare can be relevant to them.
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Wednesday 20th August
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media > Arts > Magazines & Reviews
The Man Who Collected the World
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
William Burrell made a fortune out of shipping and spent it on art. Over his long life, he assembled one of the most remarkable private collections of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, ceramics and stained glass in the world and in 1944 he donated it all - over 9,000 objects - to the city of Glasgow. The Burrell Collection finally opened to the public in 1983 but the building that bears his name contains no tribute to Burrell and he never commissioned a portrait of himself. Kirsty Wark tells the story of the self-effacing collector and tours the highlights of his collection in the company of its curators.
Factual > Arts, Culture & the Media
Dreaming the Impossible
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm, 2/3 - Making Connections
Using her skills to uncover long-forgotten and abandoned plans, architectural investigator Dr Olivia Horsfall Turner explores the fascinating and dramatic stories behind some of the grandest designs that were never built. In this episode she looks at two of the most radical civil engineering projects proposed in the last century and explores how international politics and vested interests both drove, and derailed, plans to better connect Britain to the continent.
In the early 1900s Britain was anticipating the threat of war. As concern grew about Germany expanding its naval fleet and investing in its infrastructure, there were calls to find a way for Britain's navy to be able to react swiftly to protect our waters. The solution proposed was to create a ship canal big enough for warships to cross from the Firth of Clyde on the west of Scotland to the Firth of Forth on the east. This enormous civil engineering endeavour would have completely changed the central belt of Scotland - the favoured route was through Loch Lomond, now considered one of the most treasured wilderness areas in the country.
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Thursday 21st August
Documentaries
Poaching Wars with Tom Hardy
ITV1, 1/2 - 9:00-10:00pm
Motivated by his love of animals, BAFTA award-winning actor Tom Hardy (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) travels to South Africa, Botswana and Tanzania aiming to uncover the truth about why poaching has reached crisis levels and to see for himself what can be done to stop the killing.
Having heard some appalling stories about the poaching industry, Tom is galvanised into action and in this two-part (2x60) documentary series, he is determined to see for himself why this is happening and what can be done to stop the killing.
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Friday 22nd August
Factual > Pets & Animals > Science & Nature > Nature & Environment > Documentaries
The Burrowers: Animals Underground
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3
Chris Packham sheds light on the magical underground world of three iconic British animals, badgers, water voles and rabbits. In one of the biggest natural history experiments ever undertaken, he investigates wild burrows to recreate full-scale replicas for the animals to live in and be observed, including the largest man-made rabbit warren of its kind ever built. This creates a window on their lives never witnessed before, from birth in winter to their emergence from the burrow in summer.
How do they create their burrows? How do they breed and give birth? Observe fascinating new science and new behaviour as the team design and build a rabbit warren, a badger sett and a water vole burrow with its own riverbank.
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