Off-air recordings for week 29 May-4 June 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Sunday 30th

BBC - The Big Personality Test: A Child of Our Time Special - 2 parts "Professor Robert Winston presents a documentary series following the lives of 25 British children until the age of 20. For this edition, all the kids have been filmed continuously for 48 hours, putting their day-to-day lives under the microscope. Every laugh, every tear and every movement has been recorded, counted and analysed to build up a real picture of a day in the life of the average British child."

Channel 4 - Genius of Britain - 5 part series (on every day this week) - "Britain may only be a small island, but its great scientists and inventors have literally created the modern world: from the invention of the steam engine, computers and the world-wide web to the discovery of the theory of evolution and the atom.
In this five-part series some of Britain's leading scientific figures - Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, James Dyson, David Attenborough, Robert Winston, Paul Nurse, Jim Al-Khalili, Kathy Sykes and Olivia Judson - tell the stories of the people behind these innovations.
From Isaac Newton to Frank Whittle, James Watt to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and Joseph Banks to Rosalind Franklin, these are the people who - through blood, sweat and tears - overcame all obstacles in the search for answers."

Monday 31st

BBC4 - Mud, Sweat and Tractors - 4 part series - "The documentary series looking at the history of 20th-century farming in Britain opens by focusing on milk.
In the early years of the century, 150,000 dairy farmers milked by hand and sold milk door to door. By the end of the century, the 15,000 that were left were breeding cows that increased yields by 400 per cent and milk was sold through supermarkets."

BBC4 - Farm to Pharma: The Rise and Rise of Food Science - "Documentary which explores the history of British food science, taking a fascinating voyage through over a century of petri-dishes, vitamins and E-numbers.
The connection between food manufacturers and the white coat brigade is nothing new. One hundred and fifty years before Heston Blumenthal, Birmingham chemist Alfred Bird was reinventing custard because his wife had an allergy to eggs.
By the 1930s, George Orwell was already complaining about the chemical by-products that the British people were eating, but when war gave scientists a chance to remake the British diet the improvement in the nation's health was extraordinary.
Charting the growing role that food science has played in our daily lives, we meet Tony Blake, the food scientist who pioneered instant soup for Batchelors, and we learn about biochemist Jack Drummond, the tragic mastermind of British food in the Second World War, who died alongside his family as in a mysterious murder.
We discover how vegetarian product Quorn was invented to prevent a global food crisis and how breakthroughs in flavour chemistry helped create the day-glo processed foods of the 1970s. We recall Margaret Thatcher's early career as a food scientist and find out why there was no such thing as a free lunch when it came to the promise of fat-free snacks."

Friday 4th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Bolivia's Child Miners - "Unreported World descends deep underground into Bolivia's silver mines to find boys as young as 13 working long hours in deadly conditions. The thick dust and poisonous gases in the mines mean the children face the near-certainty of crippling lung disease and a life expectancy of little more than 35 years.
The mines are centered around Potosi in the Bolivian Andes, the highest city in the world. Looming over it is a legendary mountain, the Cerro Rico. It has been mined for hundreds of years and is now being exploited by co-operatives of up to 10,000 miners.
Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Matt Haan meet 14-year-old Jose Luis, who works with 400 other miners at the San Jacinto mine, one of the largest on the mountain. He tells Rhodes that he's working in the mine because school starts in a few days and he needs money for a new uniform. Like most of the 200,000 people in Potosi, he comes from an indigenous Indian background. Although the indigenous people have recently won a decades-long struggle for political freedom in Bolivia they are still poorer than their white compatriots."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 22-28 May 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Saturday 22nd

BBC2 - Timewatch: Pyramid - The Last Secret - "For centuries archaeologists have been trying to work out how the ancient Egyptians raised huge stone blocks to the top of the Great Pyramid.
This documentary presents a radical theory by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin. He believes that an internal ramp was used, which is still inside the Pyramid waiting to be discovered. If he is right, it is the greatest discovery since Tutankhamun."

Channel 4 - Capitalism: A Love Story - "Michael Moore loves America, but America does not love Michael Moore. After the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 public opinion of the liberal filmmaker took a downturn. Republicans have good reason to hate him but the attitude of Democrats is baffling. They claim to dislike his oversimplification, his manipulation of emotions and sometimes facts, and his bombastic personality. Republicans have long used these methods to influence the public with great success - all Moore does is play them at their own highly effective game. There's been a lot of talk around health care reform about Democrats behaving too nicely, too politely. Jon Stewart recently argued on 'The Daily Show' that it's the rationality and fairness of the Democrats that will prevent them from making any real changes. While the Republicans are sending out hugely marketable statements and buzzwords, however misguided, the Democrats are bumbling around with the details. We love President Obama not for the small print of his plans, but for how he makes us feel. We need more "Yes we can" and less "Um, yes, well by 2011, we might". Moore has been a liberal in Republican's clothing for the last decade - he looks like a Republican and he sounds like a Republican. He takes radical ideas, mixes them up using the Republican recipe, and makes them easy to swallow."

Sunday 23rd

BBC2 - Money - "A BBC Drama Production two-part adaptation of Martin Amis' darkly comedic tale of excess, greed and flawed ambition set at the beginnings of Eighties capitalism.
Bold, irreverent and satirical, Money follows the story of John Self (Nick Frost), a successful British director of commercials who is thrust into the world of New York movie deals, shark agents and impossibly petulant actors in order to shoot his first film.
Navigating larger-than-life characters including uber-slick film producer Fielding Goodney (Kartheiser), wooden soap actress Caduta Massi (Jerry Hall), clean-living method actor Spunk Davis and ageing Hollywood hard-man Lorne Guyland (casting to be announced), Self lurches from one crisis to the next as he chases his dream – and the money.
Juggling his girlfriend Selina (Emma Pierson) with an old film-school crush and movie stars, Self relies on his wits and luck to survive an increasingly degenerate lifestyle – but a mysterious danger lurks that Self can't seem to shake, and it might just threaten the dream..."

Channel 4 - Dispatches: The Lost Girls of South Africa - "In South Africa a child is raped every three minutes and AIDS continues to spread with epidemic ferocity.
Dispatches follows four girls aged 11 to 13 as they struggle to come to terms with the crimes committed against them and fight the social stigma that comes with the abuse.
From the multi-BAFTA-winning True Vision team, this is an intimate and deeply moving portrayal of the tragic impact of child abuse in a post-apartheid South Africa still coming to terms with its difficult and violent past."

BBC4 - Mark Lawson Talks To Martin Amis - "Mark Lawson talks to notorious literary bad boy Martin Amis ahead of the BBC dramatisation of his book Money. In this revealing interview Amis speaks candidly about his relationship with his father Kingsley Amis, which survived the breakup of his parents' marriage and his father's disinterest in reading Martin's books. Amis also reveals how his sister Sally was a 'victim of the sexual revolution' whose consequent struggles in life influenced his latest book The Pregnant Widow."

Tuesday 25th

More4 - True Stories: A Bipolar Expedition - "Mark James' film, showing in the True Stories strand, follows Paul Downes, a successful businessman with bipolar disorder whose manic highs are followed by depressive lows.
Now he wants a wife - a soul mate and someone to care for him - and has hired a castle in Jamaica, inviting 12 Ukrainian women to join him, in the hope that one will marry him.
James follows Paul on his 2009 trip to Jamaica, and gives a rare insight into Paul's bipolar disorder, exploring its origins and the impact that the manias and depressions have had on his life.
However the most extraordinary aspect of the film is capturing Paul in the grip of a manic episode, as his interest in finding a wife dwindles and his attention turns to taking over the world."

Thursday 27th

ITV1 - How Safe Is Your Beach? : Tonight - "According to official figures, bathing at almost 200 of the UK's beaches carries a risk of infection from sewage-derived bacteria. The programme investigates the causes of this contamination and asks whether any of our beaches can be guaranteed to be free of pollution."

Friday 28th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Iraq's Next Battlefield - "As the US prepares to withdraw from Iraq, reporter Evan Williams and director Matt Haan travel to the most dangerous part of the country and find increasing religious, ethnic and political violence in this oil-rich region threatening to spill into bloody civil war once the troops leave.
The Unreported World team begins its journey in Mosul, a city of two million people that lies on the fault line between the Arab and Kurdish parts of Iraq and has been a centre of resistance to the Americans since the invasion in 2003. Their route is lined with flattened buildings that have not been rebuilt since the invasion. Seven years on, it remains the most dangerous city in Iraq, with at least 50 murders occurring every month.
In 2009 Iraqi forces took over responsibility for the security of the region, supposedly moving from a state of war to civil policing. But their main activity remains battling Sunni insurgents, who want the area to remain unstable as they battle what they see as the domination of Iraq by the Shia Muslim ruling majority.
One local commander tells Williams that most of the killings are political rather than criminal. He claims Al Qaeda are trying to cause division between Kurds, Sunnis and Shia and are also targeting some of Mosul's oldest ethnic minorities - such as the Christians, Shabaks and Yezidis - to cause fear and chaos."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 15-21 May 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Monday 17th May

BBC4 - Mental: A History of the Madhouse - "Documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years."

Tuesday 18th

More 4 - True Stories: Mugabe and the White African - "Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey's film in the True Stories strand tells of how one white farmer took on the Zimbabwe government and took Robert Mugabe himself to court.
Mike Campbell ran a mango farm in Zimbabwe which was reallocated to a poor black family (in reality, the son of one of Mugabe's former ministers) under Mugabe's Land Reform Programme. But Campbell and his son-in-law Ben Freeth took their case to a tribunal of the Southern African Development Community, an international court in Namibia, arguing the eviction was based on racial discrimination, which is illegal in Zimbabwe.
The case dragged on for over a year, during which Campbell and his family were intimidated by armed gangs, kidnapped and tortured to within an inch of their lives. This film is an intimate account of one family's bravery in the face of state brutality and whose fight for justice has implications for ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to suffer at the hands of Mugabe and his regime."

Friday 21st

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Inside Burma's Secret State - "Reporter Seyi Rhodes and director Simon Phillips spend two weeks trekking through forests to reveal the devastation the Burmese army is inflicting as it intensifies its war against the Karen people.
The team are smuggled across the Salaween river from Thailand in a small boat, covered by tarpaulin. On the other side, the few roads in Karen State are controlled by the Burmese military, so the only safe route is over mountains and through dense jungle.
The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) scouts acting as the team's guides have been part of an army that has been fighting the Burmese for 60 years. The Karen are one of Burma's hill tribes who see themselves as culturally distinct from the Burmese, with their own language, and unlike the Buddhist Burmese, they are predominantly Christian. The Burmese army has stepped up its offensive against the Karen people, who are confined to mountainous jungle and encircled.
One Karen guide, Saw-Sun, claims that the Burmese army forces Karen villagers to do their most dangerous jobs, such as walking through minefields to clear a path, and that in the latest round of fighting the army burnt Karen villages to the ground.
After four days' trekking, they find signs that they are near the scene of these attacks; hundreds of people - most of them women and children - are sleeping rough in the jungle. A village elder claims the army has driven nearly 3,000 people in the area from their homes, and they are now living in temporary camps.
One woman tells Rhodes that she and her four young children have been in the camp for two months since their village was attacked. Mu-Si-Kpoh says she only had two hours to pack and get out of her house before the Burmese soldiers arrived."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 6-14 May 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Thursday 6th

BBC2 - History Cold Case - 4-part series - "History series which sees skeletons of everyday people from across the ages analysed in staggering detail, opening new windows on the history of our forebears by literally revealing the person behind the skeleton.The fascinating work of world-renowned Professor Sue Black OBE and her team at the Centre for Human Anatomy and Identification at the University of Dundee comes under the spotlight as the team works on answering three big questions from the skeleton. Who were they? Why did they die? What does their life story tell us that we didn't know before?"

Sunday 9th

ITV 1 - The Seasons with Alan Titchmarsh - "Alan Titchmarsh goes back to his roots to find out how our changing seasons affect everything around us. The series reveals the profound and far-reaching impact that each season has on our wildlife and landscape, and how they shape the way we all live. In the first programme Alan leads us through the start of the natural year, spring, a time of hope and optimism is under every foot and around every corner new life is just waiting to begin. Alan’s natural enthusiasm for the subject, alongside stunning photography, brings the subject of spring to life, exploring and vividly displaying its transformative effect as it sweeps from south to north between March and May, affecting everything from scallop fishing in Dorset to stags shedding their antlers in the Scottish Highlands. The programme looks at why spring arrives when it does in Britain and why weather is so unpredictable at this time of year. Its broad scope encompasses how spring heralds a time of reawakening, highlighting the rich profusion of wildlife and plants emerging after the long winter days across our skies, hills, rivers, forests and coastline. Alan says: “Spring isn’t just about what you can see. It’s a feeling in the pit of your stomach and you can smell it too. Not that acrid sour smell of autumn, but a sweetness on the breeze that’s all its own.” "

Channel 4 - Time Team - "In Sutton Courtenay Tony Robinson and the Team investigate a set of buildings once occupied by Anglo Saxon royalty.
It's the rarest of archaeological sites and uncovers the biggest Saxon building ever discovered in Britain. Aerial photography of an apparently featureless Oxfordshire field revealed crop marks that suggested to archaeologists it was once the site of an impressive collection of 1,400-year-old buildings; but Time Team's digging expertise was needed to verify this.
The trenches are big and the archaeology complicated but slowly the Team begin to build up a picture of life here over 1,000 years ago, with the help of heroic Saxon poetry.
As well as stunning finds and the perplexing possibility that they have uncovered an Anglo Saxon totem pole, the archaeologists also discover a culture where heroism, story telling and drinking go hand in hand, and learn the finer points of how to insult your colleagues in Old English."

BBC4 - The Box That Changed Britain - "Poet Roger McGough narrates the extraordinary story of how a simple invention - the shipping container - changed the world forever and forced Britain into the modern era of globalisation.
With a blend of archive and modern-day filming, the incredible impact of the box is told through the eyes of dockers, seafarers, ship spotters, factory workers and logisticians. From quayside in huge container ports to onboard ships the size of four football pitches, the documentary explains how the shipping container has transformed our communities, economy and coastline."

BBC4 - Passport To Liverpool - "Documentary looking at the history of Liverpool, the former gateway to the British Empire whose character was built on the dockside by seafarers and immigrants who came from around the world seeking a new beginning.
It examines how the city's maritime history and mixture of people has made its citizens uncertain of their English identity."

Monday 10th

ITV1 - Wormwood Scrubs - 2-parts -"A compelling and candid look at life behind the locked doors of one of Europe’s largest prisons is revealed in a new documentary series for ITV1, Wormwood Scrubs. With unprecedented access to the London jail, the two part documentary follows the frenetic lives of prisoners and prison officers who make up this complex, noisy and disturbed community and includes powerful accounts from them on the emotional turmoil, frustration and anger inside."

BBC4 - Shanties and Sea Aongs with Gareth Malone - "The story of Britain's maritime past has a hidden history of shanties and sea songs, and choirmaster Gareth Malone has been travelling Britain's coast to explore this unique heritage. From dedicated traditionalists to groundbreaking recording artists, Gareth meets a variety of sea-singers from across the country.
His journey begins in Portsmouth where he meets a devoted shanty singer, before continuing on to Tyneside and the Yorkshire coast, where the Filey Fisherman's Choir, with an average age of 70, are determined to keep the tradition alive.
Gareth gets a fascinating insight into the songs of the Herring Girls when he visits Gardenstown in Scotland. In Whitby, he meets Kimber's Men, a local group who have dedicated themselves to writing and singing songs celebrating heroes of the sea, such as a rescue of 1881 when the sea was so rough the people of Whitby had to carry their 2-tonne lifeboat some six miles overland on a wooden trailer and in heavy snow to the bay where a ship had hit the rocks. Despite the exhaustion, they still managed to rescue the shipwrecked crew and passengers.
Gareth's journey ends in Port Isaac in Cornwall, where a group of local fishermen sing shanties and sea songs alongside their day job. Calling themselves the Fishermen's Friends, they have been so successful that they have landed a lucrative record deal."

Friday 14th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Tobacco's Child Workers - "Unreported World travels to Malawi to reveal that children as young as three are being illegally employed to produce tobacco, much of it destined to be consumed by British smokers.
Malawi's children suffer health problems from handling tobacco and some are trapped in bonded labour arrangements, leaving them unable to escape. Little seems to be being done to protect their health and wellbeing.
In Mchinji district, reporter Jenny Kleeman and producer Julie Noon find a group of 15 to 20 children sorting tobacco by the roadside. Emilida and her three children - including her three-year-old son - have been working there since dawn. She tells Kleeman the four of them will get about 80 pence for a day's work. The air is thick with tobacco dust and Emilida says it makes the family feel unwell.
A family of seven harvesting tobacco tell Kleeman they work every day from dawn to dusk. The children's hands are covered in a sticky brown residue and they say they suffer from severe headaches: a symptom of green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning, where high doses of nicotine are absorbed through the skin. In other tobacco-growing countries like the US farmers are advised to wear protective clothing, but there is no sign of it anywhere the team visits.
Farges, the mother of the family, tells Kleeman the entire family takes home the equivalent of £18 a year. Her children must work so they can fulfil the daily quota of tobacco the farm owner has demanded of them. She says the farm owners claim they're not getting a fair price for tobacco at auction and can't pay them more. The family wants to escape tobacco farming, but they've been forced to borrow money from the land owner and can't leave until they work off their debt. The UN says this is bonded labour, a modern form of slavery."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 10-16 April 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Monday 12th

BBC1 - Panorama: Is Britain Full? - "Panorama investigates just how overcrowded the UK actually is. The latest official population projection has it rising over the next twenty years to 70 million. If it does, everybody will feel the effects - from where we live to where our kids go to school.
Some argue that the extra population, much of it made up of new immigrants, will help boost the British economy, but will it? And what can politicians actually do to stop the growth?"

Channel 4 - Saxon Gold: Finding the Hoard - "
In July 2009, amateur metal detecting enthusiast Terry Herbert uncovered the largest Anglo Saxon treasure hoard ever found in Britain.
Just below the surface of a field belonging to farmer Fred Johnson near Lichfield, Staffordshire, he unearthed over 200 pieces of jewelled gold and silver treasure, buried, lost and forgotten for over a millennium. Archaeologists later excavated a further 1,400 items.
'What I found was equivalent to finding Tutankhamen's treasure,' says Herbert.
The unprecedented find of Anglo Saxon gold mesmerised archaeologists and historians, making headlines around the world.
Saxon Gold: Finding the Hoard talks to Terry Herbert and farmer Fred Johnson, as well as the archaeologists who painstakingly excavated the site in secret to prevent 'nighthawking', and the experts from the Birmingham and the British Museums, who first realised the international significance of the hoard.
Dating back to the mid-seventh century, the 1,600 pieces of treasure, weighing over 14lbs, have been valued at an incredible £3.285 million; the workmanship is so magnificent it could have been part of a Royal treasury. When the find was displayed at the Birmingham Museum 40,000 people queued for hours to see it.
For the finder, the discovery has been life-changing; it will make him and the landowner millionaires. For archaeologists it's the beginning of a long journey to try and unravel the mysteries and answer the many questions generated by the hoard: who did it belong to and why did they bury it and never return? Could the treasure be trophies of war, stripped from the dead and dying?"

Tuesday 13th

BBC1 - Spoilt Rotten?: Panorama Special - "From obesity to alcohol misuse, from rotting baby teeth to hearing problems caused by passive smoking - Britain's largest children's hospital is treating younger and younger children for health problems which are ultimately preventable. Many are the result of kids' lifestyles and are, according to the experts, causing them unnecessary suffering.
Five-year-old Kaitlyn is having nearly half her teeth extracted because she's been consuming half a mug of tomato ketchup every day, 13-year-old Macaulay has been drinking half a bottle of vodka every Friday night, while five-year-old Leon weighs the same as an average 17-year-old.
With unprecedented access to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, Panorama meets the kids and the paediatricians treating them, and follows them home in an attempt to uncover the root cause of their problems. Reporter Richard Bilton soon discovers that some of the basic health messages from the doctors are not getting through to the parents.
The experts' forecast for our children is bleak: this generation is in danger of being the first to die before their parents- and all because of the way we live."

BBC4 - TV's Black Pioneers - "Documentary highlighting the experiences, trials and tribulations of the first generation of black African-Caribbean actors that worked in UK theatre, film and television during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. They recount their lives in the acting profession through personal testimony which is illustrated by the use of archive film and photography. Contributors include Cy Grant, Joan Hooley, George Harris, Mona Hammond, Rudolph Walker and Jim Pines."

Thursday 15th

BBC2 - Welcome to Lagos - new 3-part series - "Three part observational documentary series which explores life at the sharp end of one of the most extreme urban environments in the world: Lagos, Nigeria."

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 3-9 April 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Saturday 3rd

Channel 4 - Blitz: London's Firestorm - " On 29 December 1940 Hitler hoped his Luftwaffe would create a firestorm to destroy central London and break the spirit of the British people. Tens of thousands of incendiary bombs were dropped on the heart of the city. The story of that awe-inspiring night is told in a feature-length documentary that brings eyewitness accounts to life using dramatic reconstructions and CGI. Firemen and heavy rescue workers fought desperately all night to control the burning buildings as the fire raged out of control. And in its path was the symbolic form of St Paul's, which Churchill demanded was protected at any cost. Londoners had come to expect nightly raids, but this was on a different scale and they fled for the protection of shelters, uncertain if their home would still stand after the bombing. Many were to die. The following morning the survivors emerged after a terrifying and sleepless night to face the smoking ruins of the city."

Monday 5th

BBC1 - The Orphans Who Survived the Concentration Camps - "To mark Passover, a remarkable story of liberation from the Holocaust.
It's the story of 300 Jewish orphans who having been captured by the Nazis defied the odds against their survival, and lived to tell the tale in Windermere. The group of 300 orphans were separated from their parents and taken from the ghettos to camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau. Either by luck, instinct or alertness, they somehow managed to escape the selection process that led to the gas chambers. Even as the Allies were closing in on the Nazis, the orphans were sent on to death marches across frozen Europe, deep into German territory. Although finally liberated in May 1945, their fight to live continued as they were orphans. Where could they go? Windermere in the Lake District proved to be their promised land. With many of them now in their eighties, and for the first time on British television, four of those orphans tell their story of extraordinary human resilience."

Friday 9th

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Pakistan's Terror Central - "Unreported World is granted rare access to the Pakistan headquarters of what the US and UN say is a front organisation for one of the world's biggest terrorist networks, and the organisation behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
While the group says it's a charity set up to help the poor, Reporter Evan Williams talks to insiders, government ministers and terrorism experts to investigate the truth about an organisation that has expanded its activities from Kashmir to attacking Western targets outside Pakistan.
Williams and Director Will West begin their journey in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province. They have a meeting with Asadullah, a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba: 'The Army of the Righteous'. The terrorist organisation has been directly blamed for the Mumbai attacks that killed 173 people, and a string of deadly attacks in India. Asadullah tells Williams he and 26 friends fought in Kashmir, but he was the only one who survived.
Lashkar's terrorist activities led to it being banned in Pakistan. But the United Nations says it is now operating in the country under a new name - Jamaat-ud-Dawa - and the UN continues to view it as a terrorist front organisation. JuD claims it is no more than an Islamic charity, and denies it is a front for Lashkar and its terrorism... "

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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.

Off-air recordings for week 27 March - 2 April 2010

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk ,or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

Saturday 27th

Channel 4 - Time Team Special; Londinium, the Edge of the Empire - "Two thousand years ago London didn't exist. It was created by the Romans in the first century AD, when they settled in the area now occupied by the City. The settlement started as a simple bridge over the River Thames, but within 100 years it had become a bustling city with a population of 30,000.
A long way from Rome, Londinium has tended to be regarded as something of a frontier town, an unsophisticated outpost perched precariously on the very edge of the Roman empire. In the past decade, though, a huge amount of redevelopment has taken place in the City, providing an unparalleled opportunity for archaeologists to find out more about the old Roman city beneath the modern streets and buildings. What they've discovered suggests that far from being a relatively uncivilised backwater Londinium was in fact one of the most sophisticated and advanced cities in the entire empire."

Sunday 28th

More 4 - Cutting Edge: The Millionaire and the Murder Mansion - "In August 2008, a devastating fire raged at a Shropshire mansion. As the flames engulfed Osbaston House, mystery surrounded the disappearance of Christopher Foster, his wife Jill and 15-year-old daughter Kirstie. What started out as a fire became a double-murder, suicide and arson investigation that would shock Britain. As vital evidence went up in smoke before their eyes, the police were faced with a number of conspiracy theories and a frenzy of press speculation about the Fosters' fate. With exclusive access to the West Mercia police's painstaking investigation and interviews with close friends and family members, The Millionaire and the Murder Mansion charts the complex jigsaw puzzle involving pathologists, forensic anthropologists, and arson, ballistics and CCTV specialists. Interspersed with the detailed investigation are the emotional interviews with family members and friends who provide an insight into the dark secrets and many sides of the apparently doting husband and father who committed this horrific crime."

Monday 29th

BBC1 - Panorama: Passports to Kill - "It was a murder plot all captured on CCTV: the victim, and the disguised hit squad who stalked then killed him in a hotel room in Dubai. But who murdered Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and why?
Panorama's Jane Corbin tracks down the answers in Israel, Gaza and Dubai, and shows how British passports and stolen identities were used in a crime which was never meant to be revealed to the world."

BBC4 - How to Win an Election Special: A Panorama Guide - "In the 1950s, politicians cared little for what Churchill called the 'idiot's lantern'. Now television is central to a political leader's image and his chances of winning an election.
This is the story of how politicians abandoned the soapbox for the studio - from the early performances of the two Harolds, Macmillan and Wilson, through the TV campaigns of Margaret Thatcher to the spin-doctored presentation of Tony Blair. Has television finally reduced our politicians to actors spouting soundbites?
With six decades of fascinating archive from television's longest running current affairs programme -Panorama - this is the story of how television has changed British politics."

Tuesday 30th

BBC4 - The Genius of Omar Khayyam - "Filmed in part across Iran during the run up to the 2009 election and presented by Sadeq Saba.
Born almost 1000 years ago in Persia, Omar Khayyam was an astronomer, mathematician and poet. His contribution to algebra and geometry has sealed his reputation as one the greatest mathematicians of all time; and a lunar crater has been named after him for his advances in astronomy.
Omar Khayyam lived during a medieval golden age of science and learning in the East. He was among a group of pioneering scientists who were influenced by ideas from ancient Greece, India and China. The film reveals how Islam and the advancement of science went hand in hand.
In the West, Khayyam is best known for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam most famously translated by a Victorian man of letters called Edward Fitzgerald. Published in 1859, the same year as Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the film shows how and why the Rubaiyat became one of the most famous poems in the English language, attracting a who's who of literary admirers including Thomas Hardy, TS Eliot and Arthur Conan Doyle.
A decade after its success in England, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was published in America where its message of live for the day instantly captured the public imagination. Its popularity spawned all sorts of products including Omar tooth powder, playing cards, and the first illustrated editions of the Rubaiyat. America's favourite poet, Walt Whitman was a fan, and soldiers took miniature copies of the Rubaiyat to the battleground.
Omar Khayyam remains a significant figure in present day Iran, and the film explores why despite his apparent religious scepticism, Khayyam's philosophy continues to resonate with modern Iranians."

Wednesday 31st

BBC2 - Who Needs Fathers? - new series - "A major series to mark 20 years since the passing of the Children Act, investigates whether its key principle is being adhered to - that in family breakdown and divorce, the welfare of the child is paramount. One in three British children have parents who are separated, and it's their relationship with the absent parent that's the key factor in their long-term wellbeing. The film follows two families in very different circumstances."

Friday 2nd

Channel 4 - Unreported World: Nigeria's Killing Fields - "As the world focuses on recent sectarian violence in Nigeria, this film looks at the eventsleading up to the latest round of bloodletting... "

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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.