Monday 25th
BBC2 - Who's Watching You? - new 3 part series - "A new three part series looks at why the UK has become one of the most watched places in the world - with millions of CCTV cameras, a growing network of number plate recognition cameras, one of the largest DNA databases in the world and government plans for the basic details of all our phone calls e-mails, and every internet site we visit to be logged and kept.
We all benefit from better crime detection and from easier and cheaper services. The government argues that: "If you've got nothing to hide, then you've got nothing to fear." Richard Bilton explores the hidden world of surveillance.
He goes inside the CCTV nerve centre, sees how all of our journeys can be monitored, and meets undercover agents, those who are watched and those who have fallen foul of modern surveillance.
Who's Watching You? explores why increasingly we are all being watched and why some think we have already become a surveillance society."
BBC2 - Going Postal - "Documentary telling the story of the school and workplace shootings which have cast a shadow over American society since the 1980s, including interviews with survivors, the families of those who died, and the friends and families of the murderers.
How and why does this violence occur? The tenth anniversary of the Columbine massacre is in 2009, but the phenomenon is twice as old and hundreds have been killed. Michael Carneal, serving a life sentence for a notorious school shooting in Kentucky when he was 14, is interviewed. His raw and troubling story, and those of other shootings, are placed in context by interviews with people who have researched the subject in depth, from the first cluster of shootings in the 1980s in the US Postal Service - hence the phrase 'going postal' - to more recent occurrences.
Author Mark Ames argues that although mental instability plays a role, American rampage shooters are rarely insane and impossible to profile: they could be the person sitting next to you in class or in the office."
Tuesday 26th
BBC4 - How The Celts Saved Britain - "Provocative two-part documentary in which Dan Snow blows the lid on the traditional Anglo-centric view of history and reveals how the Irish saved Britain from cultural oblivion during the Dark Ages.
He examines the demise of civilisation in Britain after the collapse of the Roman Empire and looks at how Ireland became the cradle of a new European civilisation."
BBC1 - Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link - "On Tuesday 26 May, BBC One shows the exclusive story behind a scientific discovery that could revolutionise our understanding of human evolution.
Narrated by David Attenborough, the one-off 60-minute documentary, Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, tells the story of an important scientific development that could tell us more about where we come from.
The fossil, known as Ida, could be an indication of one of the roots of anthropoid evolution – the point at which our primate ancestors began first developing the features that would evolve into our own.
Co-funded by the BBC and produced by award-winning filmmaker Anthony Geffen of Atlantic Productions, the documentary will offer unique access to a scientific discovery announced today at the American Museum of Natural History. "
BBC2 - Simon Schama's John Donne - "Simon Schama celebrates the life and work of Britain's greatest love poet, John Donne.
For Schama, Donne is the poet who transformed English poetry through his emotional honesty and skilled use of language. With the help of academic John Carey and actor Fiona Shaw, he undertakes a passionate appraisal and forensic examination of Donne's work."
More4 - True Stories: Painting the Mind - "Sarah Feltes's film [...] looks at the untapped artistic resources of the human brain. When builder Tommy McHugh and chiropractor Jon Sarkin suffered massive brain traumas, as well as undergoing personality changes, they suddenly revealed a previously hidden talent: to create art that amazed critics and collectors. So can damage to one part of the brain unleash potential that is idle in other parts? Scientist Professor Allan Snyder of Sydney's Centre of the Mind believes everyone possesses these powers and by using a technique he calls transcranial magnetic stimulation, he attempts to unlock the hidden potential that is dormant in all our brains."
Wednesday 27th
BBC4 - Armando Iannucci in Milton's Heaven and Hell - "Writer and performer Armando Iannucci explores his passion for John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost.
As a poet, Milton is often considered too difficult, obscure or miserable for today's reader, but to Iannucci, Paradise Lost is a thrilling work of creative genius that should be embraced by modern society.
Milton tackles everything from good and evil to human freedom and the existence of God, in language unparalleled in both scope and variety. In the film, Iannucci explores Paradise Lost in detail and looks at the way Milton's extraordinary life – encompassing work as spin doctor to Oliver Cromwell, being imprisoned in the tower of London and losing his sight – fed into his masterpiece."
Thursday 28th
BBC4 - Michael Wood on Beowulf - "Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life."
BBC4 - Feasts - Japan - "Food writer Stefan Gates immerses himself in extraordinary feasts and festivals. In Japan, helps a Shinto priestess carry a wooden penis around a suburb of Tokyo and joins the Baby Sumo festival where parents compete to get their children to cry first, to give them good luck for the rest of their lives. Finally, he embarks on the most amazing event of his life - the Naked Man festival, which involves much drinking, eating and nudity, as traditional Japanese reserve is literally stripped away."
Friday 29th
BBC4 - Storyville: The Jew who Dealt with the Nazis - "After 50 years, will the Jew accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust be exonerated?
How much should you negotiate with the enemy? In Israel, the debate over that question evoked fury to the point of assassination. Such was the case of Kasztner.
Dr Israel (Rezso) Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew who tried to rescue the last million Jews of Europe by negotiating face to face with Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, was gunned down by another Jew who never set foot in Nazi Europe.
After 50 years, his assassin Ze'ev Eckstein breaks his silence on the fateful night he shot and killed Kasztner.
Some people considered Kasztner a hero for his eventual rescue of almost 1,700 Jews on a train to safety in Switzerland. Yet this extraordinary act was later cast as an one of betrayal. After Kasztner moved to Israel, he fought a vicious libel battle in a trial that portrayed him as 'the man who sold his soul to the devil', leading to his assassination in Tel Aviv in 1957.
This documentary re-opens the history books on Kasztner's life and the events surrounding this controversial figure. It follows Kasztner's family and survivors, plagued by a legacy they are determined to change. Ze'ev Eckstein reveals, step-by-step, his transformation into an assassin - the events and passions that turned a young man into an agent of politics and revenge.
Intensely emotional for those still living it, part real-time investigation and part historical journey, filmmaker Gaylen Ross unearths the Kasztner story and its ramifications for his family and his country, exploring the very nature of history itself - who writes it, how it is remembered and what is at stake for the present and the future."
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* This applies to staff members 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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