Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk , or fchmediaservices@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*
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Saturday 5th November
Documentaries
The Truth About Binge Drinking
ITV2, 8:00-9:00pm
As the debate continues over Britain's apparently increasing `booze culture', former Liberty X star Michelle Heaton participates in a social experiment. Under the close supervision of medics, she drinks more than the recommended level of alcohol for 30 consecutive days, intending to reveal the full price that binge drinkers pay for their habit.
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Sunday 6th November
Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology; Weather
Will It Snow?
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
This topical programme taps into the nation's obsession with the weather and asks whether we are heading for another 'snowmageddon' as experienced in the previous two years.
Can forecasters give us warning this time around? How does the 'olde' weather lore compare with the supercomputers? And what are we doing across Britain to prepare ourselves as we head into winter?
'Will It Snow?' predicts what another extreme cold snap would spell for Britain's economy as it puts the science of weather forecasting to the test and asks the experts what we are in store for between now and spring.
Factual; Crime and Justice; Documentaries
Storyville: Murder on a Sunday Morning
BBC4, 10:00-11:55pm
Jacksonville, Florida, May 2000. Mary Ann Stephens is shot in the head at point blank range in front of her husband. Two hours later, a 15-year-old black American, Brenton Butler, is arrested walking down a nearby street.
Jean-Xavier De Lestrade's Academy Award-winning film follows his trial. Everyone involved with the case, from investigators to journalists, is ready to condemn Butler, except his lawyer Patrick McGuiness. A dazzling and magnetic presence of Hollywood proportions, McGuiness reopens the inquiry, and in a dramatic and spine-tingling sequence of events, he and his team discover a slew of shocking and troubling elements about the case.
Murder on a Sunday Morning is gripping and heart-wrenching - the stuff suspense novelists only dream of writing.
Factual; Science and Nature
A History of the Brain
BBC Radio 4, 10 part series
Dr Geoff Bunn's 10 part History of the Brain is a journey through 5000 years of our understanding of the most complex thing in the known universe. From Neolithic times to the present day, Geoff journeys through the many ideas of what the brain is for and how it fulfils its functions. While referencing the core physiology and neuroscience, this is a cultural, not a scientific history. What soon becomes obvious is that our understanding of this most inscrutable organ has in all periods been coloured by the social and political expedients of the day no less than by the contemporary scope of scientific or biological exploration.
In Episode 1: A Hole in the Head, the focus is on trepanation, the practice of drilling holes in the skull believing that such operations might correct physiological or spiritual problems. Trepanation reveals much about the understanding of the brain from Neolithic to recent times. The Ancient Egyptians, however, rarely trepanned, even though their Secret Book of the Physician, one of the oldest medical texts in the world, shows that they recognised how damage to the brain can paralyze limbs on opposite sides of the body. Believing the heart to be the core organ, they discarded the brain altogether at death, since it had no part to play in the afterlife.
The series is written and presented by Dr Geoff Bunn of Manchester Metropolitan University. Actors Paul Bhattacharjee and Jonathan Forbes provide the voices of those who have written about the brain across the ages. Actor Hattie Morahan gives the Anatomy Lesson establishing the part of the brain to be highlighted in each episode - in this instance the cranium and the meninges. The original, atmospheric score is supplied by composer, Barney Quinton. The producer is Marya Burgess.
Factual; Documentaries
Shankill Butchers
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm
With 19 murders between them, the Shankill Butchers were the most prolific gang of serial killers in UK history. During the dark days of the Troubles their savagery stood apart, paralysing both communities in Northern Ireland with fear. With unique access to the evidence, and exclusive interviews, Stephen Nolan goes back to the patch where he was brought up to ask how the Shankill Butchers got away with murder for so long.
One Life: Getting Away With Murder
BBC4, 11:30pm-12:10am
Documentary which follows Ann Ming as she campaigns to have her daughter's killer tried for murder a second time. Julie was murdered 17 years ago by her boyfriend, Billy Dunlop. Billy was subsequently tried for her murder, but found not guilty. Only later did he brag that he had committed the crime, but the double jeopardy law, which has stood for 800 years in Britain, meant that he could not be tried for the same crime twice. Ann Ming has successfully campaigned to change the law. ONE life follows Ann as she seeks to get justice for the murder of her daughter as the first double jeopardy case is brought back to the courts.
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Tuesday 8th November
Documentaries
My Transsexual Summer
Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm, 1/4
Max, 25, has already undergone 'top surgery': a double mastectomy and male chest sculpting. He is hoping to become Britain's first transgender Rabbi.
Former policeman Karen, 52, is preparing for full gender re-assignment surgery. Drew, 22, is stuck living at home, and desperate to lead a 'normal' life in a world that constantly asks 'Is that a boy or a girl?'
Lewis, 22, is looking to raise money for a double mastectomy and investigating a phalloplasty: penis construction; the surgeries he wants to make him feel fully male.
Fox, 30, has only been transitioning for six months, and struggles daily to overcome his feminine looks. Donna, 25, is content living between genders, but navigating relationships can be hard.
Sarah, 28, has just begun to live full-time as a woman and is building up the courage to tell her parents that she has changed her life forever.
The decision to change gender can leave many trans people profoundly isolated, and this group of seven is no different. Though some derive enormous strength from family and friends, others can find themselves cut off and many struggle to find work.
Now they are coming together to share advice and support, reflecting a growing on-line community where many hundreds of transgender people have been making contact with one another.
By physically coming together, the group develops genuine friendships and gives themselves the strength to overcome some of the multiple challenges of being trans in day-to-day life.
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Wednesday 9th November
Factual; Crime and Justice; Science and Nature; Nature and Environment
Murder On The Lake
BBC4, 2:30-4:00am
Joan Root, with her husband Alan, produced beautiful and famous natural history films, born of her deep love of Africa and its flora and fauna. This delicate but determined member of Kenya's Happy Valley was gunned down in January 2006 by intruders bearing AK-47s. Four men were charged with her murder, including David Chege, the leader of a private vigilante group Root herself had financed to stop the illegal fishing that was killing Lake Naivasha, the beautiful lake beside which she lived.
Chege was from Karagita, the largest of the slums that has sprung up beside the lake in the last twenty years. In that time, the population of Naivasha has rocketed from 30,000 to 350,000 as a desperate tide of impoverished migrant workers arrived in search of employment on Kenya's flourishing flower farms. This has created squalor, crime and, in the minds of Root and her fellow naturalists, ecological apocalypse.
This film tells the story of the extraordinary life and brutal death of Joan Root, and of her campaign to save the lake she loved. Who killed Joan Root? Was it the fish poachers, whom Root stopped from plying their illegal trade in a bid to save her beloved Lake Naivasha? Was it her loyal lieutenant Chege, whom Root ultimately cut off from her payroll? Or was it one of her white neighbours, with whom Root had feuded?
Through the telling of Root's story, the film opens a window onto contemporary Africa and the developed world's relationship to it. For it is the Kenyan rose, which is exported by the millions on a daily basis from Naivasha, that has brought not just jobs and foreign exchange earnings, but a population explosion that has caused the destruction of the environment Root worked so hard to stop. Her campaign may have ultimately cost her her life.
Factual; Crime and Justice; Documentaries
The Thin Blue Line
BBC4, 9:00-10:35pm
Errol Morris broke cinematic ground with The Thin Blue Line, establishing a new genre in the non-fiction feature by creating a fascinating reconstruction and investigation of a brutal and senseless murder.
The case in question is centred on the 1976 murder of a Dallas policeman. The murder remained unsolved for over a month until the Dallas police department received word that 16-year-old David Harris had been arrested in Vidor, Texas, after having bragged to friends that he killed a Dallas cop. Although the murder weapon was found in a nearby swamp, Harris later insisted that his boasting was meant only to impress his friends and insisted the real murderer was a hitchhiker he had picked up earlier that day named Randall Adams.
Morris assembles diverse interviews, photo montages, film clips and reenactments of the crime to make a strong case for Adams's innocence, leading to a shocking finale.
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Thursday 10th November
News; Current Affairs; Politics
Tonight: Life After The Riots
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm
Julie Etchingham visits towns and cities affected by the August riots to discover whether promises to help families and business owners affected by the disturbances have been kept. She also examines how the police are faring in their efforts to catch those responsible for the looting and violence.
Factual; Science and Nature; Religion and Ethics
The End of God? A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion
BBC4, 8:00-9:00pm
The relationship between science and religion has been long and troubled: from the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church in 17th century Italy, through the clashes between creationism and evolution in 20th century America, right up to recent claims that the universe does not need God.
Delving through the rich archive of programmes from Horizon and BBC Science, Thomas Dixon looks at what lies behind this difficult relationship. Using original footage from 1925, he tells the story of John Scopes, a Tennessee teacher who was tried for teaching evolution. He sees the connections between religion and American politics in the story of a more recent court case – the trial of Intelligent Design. He looks at what happens when new scientific discoveries start to explain events that were once seen as the workings of God, and explains how some of our most famous scientists have seen God in the grandest laws of the universe. Finally, he finds intriguing evidence from brain science which hints that belief in God is here to stay.
Documentary
Brunel's Last Launch: A Time Team Special
Channel 4, 9:00-10:00pm
Nowadays, London's East End is synonymous with the 2012 Olympic Games. Cutting-edge engineering and design have transformed the Olympic Park. But 150 years ago, the world was watching for a very different reason, although the spectacle on display was as high-tech as anything on offer today. The East End was once home to the most advanced shipbuilding industry - and best workers and shipyards - in the world. A century and a half ago, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain's most famous engineer, was about to launch a ship five times bigger than any that had ever been built before, the most revolutionary vessel the world had ever seen: the SS Great Eastern. Pioneering the transition from sail to steam and timber to iron, Brunel and East London's ship builders created vessels that were bigger, faster and tougher than ever before. But this launch was a disaster. Brunel went from hero to laughing stock overnight as his leviathan stuck on the slipway. Brunel died not long after. Today archaeologists are scouring the banks of the Thames to discover why launching such a big vessel proved a complete disaster. Examining the slipways, they hope to discover what went wrong and how it affected shipbuilding in London for ever. Tony Robinson joins them in their quest to solve the puzzle. But he and the team also explore some of the extraordinary successes of this long-gone industry and a time when the East End led the world.
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Friday 11th November
Art, Culture and the Media
Art For Heroes: A Culture Show Special
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm
Tim Samuels offers an insight into the role of art therapy in the rehabilitation of former servicemen and women suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Veterans of recent British conflicts share their experiences of the condition and reveal how drawing, sculpting and painting are helping alleviate their symptoms. Tim also travels to Chicago, where he meets Professor of Neurology Dr Lukas Konopka, whose brain mapping demonstrates art's potential to heal.
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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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