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 4th March 2012
Documentaries
War Horse: The Real Story
Channel 4, 8:00-9:00pm
The truth about the million British horses that served in World War I is even more epic than Steven Spielberg's War Horse feature film. This documentary tells their extraordinary, moving story, begining with the mass call-up of horses from every farm and country estate in the land. Racing commentator Brough Scott tells the tale of his aristocratic grandfather General Jack Seely and his beloved horse Warrior, who would become the most famous horse of the war. The British Army hoped its illustrious cavalry regiments would win a swift victory, but it would be years before they enjoyed their moment of glory. Instead, in a new era of mechanised trench warfare, the heavy horses transporting guns, ammunition and food to the front-line troops were most important. A quarter of a million of these horses died from shrapnel wounds and disease. But the deep bond that developed between man and horse helped both survive the hell of the Somme and Passchendaele. Behind the lines an army of vets worked miracles to treat injured horses and keep them going. The finest hour of the cavalry came in spring 1918 when - led by the warhorse Warrior - they checked the German advance before going on to help win the war. But there was further heartache when the war ended. Eighty five thousand of the oldest horses were sold for meat to feed POWs and the half-starved local population. Half a million horses were sold to French farmers to help rebuild the countryside. Only 60,000 made it back to Britain. Six of these horses would pull the body of the Unknown Warrior to its last resting place in Westminster Abbey.
Factual; Science and Nature; Weather
Orbit: Earth's Extraordinary Journey
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Right now you're hurtling around the sun at 64,000 miles an hour (100,000 kms an hour). In the next year you'll travel 584 million miles, to end up back where you started. Presenters Kate Humble and Dr Helen Czerski follow the Earth's voyage around the sun for one complete orbit, to witness the astonishing consequences this journey has for us all. In this first episode they travel from July to the December solstice, experiencing spectacular weather and the largest tides on Earth. To show how the Earth's orbit affects our lives, Helen jumps out of an aeroplane and Kate briefly becomes the fastest driver on Earth.
Arts, Culture and the Media; Children's Literature
Comp Lit
BBC Radio 4, 1:30-2:00pm
A children's book using the word "Paki". An angry Daily Telegraph editorial about teen fiction. A new group of writers and teachers grappling with the difficult lives of new young readers. 'Comp Lit.' may not have been a literary genre. But it had widespread repercussions. Nick Baker revisits a period in children's literature, the 1970s, when stories with gritty true life settings sent the boarding school story packing, at least until the arrival of Harry Potter. A new era of fiction set in state schools, aimed at a diverse new readership, hungry for stories about their lives, rather than the idealised lives of middle class children. Nick traces the arrival of stories for and about 'ordinary' boys and girls of all ages, talking to writers Robert Leeson, Bernard Ashley, Gene Kemp, Farrukh Dhondy and Jan Needle about a time when the politics of class and the classroom, of race and gender, came together in fiction. By the 1970s, books like The Trouble with Donovan Croft by Bernard Ashley, The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler by Gene Kemp and Come To Mecca by Farrukh Dhondy were depicting real life in Britain. Authors were often teachers, keen to capture the imaginations of reluctant readers with stories they'd relate to. The stories were instantly popular. They inspired the hit TV drama Grange Hill.. What kids should and did read became a hot topic. The new books told stories charged with the language and behaviour found in schools the readers went to. Fostering, working mums, benefits, multiracial friendships and racist bullying were all grist to the mill. Did they sacrifice fantasy for social realism? Should the politics of class race and gender be kept out of the children's books? Nick examines the legacy of Comp Lit.
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Monday 5th March 2012
Documentaries
The Fastest Changing Place On Earth
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm
White Horse Village is a tiny farming community deep in rural China. A decade ago, it became part of the biggest urbanisation project in human history, as the Chinese government decided to take half a billion farmers and turn them into city-dwelling consumers. White Horse Village was to become a city of 200,000 in just a few years. White Horse Village is a tiny farming community deep in rural China. A decade ago, it became part of the biggest urbanisation project in human history, as the Chinese government decided to take half a billion farmers and turn them into city-dwelling consumers. White Horse Village was to become a city of 200,000 in just a few years.
Filmed over the past six years, Carrie Gracie follows the lives of three local people during this upheaval. She meets Xiao Zhang, a mother and rice farmer desperate to see her children have a better life, Xie Tingming, an entrepreneur determined to make money and push the development forward and the local Communist Party Secretary, who is caught between what the party wants and a way of life that has endured for centuries.
The Fastest Changing Place on Earth, is an extraordinary story of ordinary people in one tiny village as the Government's epic plans sweep through China at a speed and scale unimaginable anywhere else on earth. In just ten years they plan to build thousands of new cities, a new road network to rival the USA's and three hundred of the world's biggest dams.
Factual; Documentaries
Knuckle
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
Documentary which goes inside the secretive Traveller world - a world of long and bitter memories. Filmed over twelve years, the film chronicles a history of violent feuding between rival families, using remarkable access to document the bare-fist fights between the Quinn McDonaghs and the Joyce clans, who, though cousins, have clashed for generations. Vivid, violent and funny, the film explores the need for revenge and the pressure to fight for the honour of your family name.
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Tuesday 6th March 2012
Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology
Horizon: Solar Storms - The Threat to Planet Earth
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
There is a new kind of weather to worry about, and it comes from our nearest star. Scientists are expecting a fit of violent activity on the sun which will propel billions of tonnes of superheated gas and pulses of energy towards our planet. They have the power to close down our modern technological civilisation - and in 1989, a solar storm cut off the power to the Canadian city of Quebec. Horizon meets the space weathermen who are trying to predict whats coming our way, and organistions like the National Grid who are preparing for the impending solar storms.
Factual; Documentaries
File On 4
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-8:40pm, What Drives Fathers To Kill Their Families?
In the last two months, four fathers have killed their partners, children and themselves. File on 4 investigates what drives these men to take such drastic action. The programme talks to relatives, expert forensic psychiatrists and academics to try to find out why they became so-called 'family annihilators'. It looks at new research into such cases which points to a link to unemployment rates and the levels of gun ownership. It will also ask whether authorities like the health service and police could do more to watch for signs that men are a risk to their families and asks whether new gun licence measures are working.
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Wednesday 7th March 2012
Documentaries
Granny's Moving In: A Wonderland Film
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm
With costs of retirement homes rising, more people are choosing to take care of elderly relatives themselves. This documentary follows Phil and Sue Caroll as they take in her 83-year-old mother Peggy, who is in the early stages of dementia, but proves as difficult as any teenager. Determined to enjoy herself at any cost, Peggy goes out on the town dancing while Sue and Phil are left worrying about her safety. So after a few months under the same roof, they devise what they hope will be the perfect solution - converting the garage into a granny flat to give this fun-loving OAP her independence and them their peace of mind.
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Thursday 8th March 2012
Documentaries; History
She-Wolves: England's Early Queens
BBC4, 3:45-4:45am, series 1, 1/3 - Matilda and Eleanor
Helen Castor explores the role of queens in medieval and Tudor England, analysing how they evolved from being the wives of kings to powerful figures in their own right - but faced great struggles to impose their authority in a male-dominated society. She begins by recalling the life of Matilda, the daughter of Henry I, who waged war against her cousin Stephen in the mid-12th century in a bid to be recognised as her father's rightful successor. The historian also charts the turbulent life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Henry II, who played a major role in governing England during the latter half of the 12th century.
Documentaries; Natural World
Natural World: Grizzlies of Alaska
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm
Ecologist Chris Morgan follows the daily struggle of a grizzly bear as she rears her two cubs in Alaska and teaches them to hunt as well as survive the harsh conditions of winter. She must also keep them safe from prowling males in a region where violent encounters between the animals are frequent.
Factual; Crime and Justice
Law In Action
BBC Radio 4, 8:00-8:30pm, 3/4 Sport and the Law
The law is increasingly impacting on sport, with landmark cases being heard in the High Court and European Court of Justice in areas like drugs and employment law. The involvement of lawyers has increased as the professionalism and importantly the money has increased. But when sport ends up in the ordinary courts the cases can be slow and in some cases financially crippling. Governing bodies are often keen to stay out of court, and sport has instituted its own courts, such as the Court for Arbitration for Sport. Many sporting governing bodies write into their constitutions that the CAS be the first port of call in dispute resolution.
The CAS will play a key role at the Olympics, but dispute resolution starts long before the games themselves. Britain's rhythm gymnastics team are already appealing against a decision not to select them for the Olympics and sprinter Dwain Chambers is awaiting a decision by CAS on whether the British Olympic Association rules that currently bar him from competing in an Olympic Games break the international rules on drug bans.
But the move away from the normal courts is not driven by cost alone. There is a debate about how far the law courts should be involved in decisions which impact on sport. The European Union has recognised the special nature of sport, and this has been welcomed by sporting governing bodies. But are we seeing the build up of a body of sports law, which might conflict with law in other areas? How far should sport be special in the eyes of the law? And where should the boundary lie between areas which are decided by traditional courts, sports courts or left up to the sport governing bodies themselves? Joshua Rosenberg talks to those involved with sport and the law.
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