Off-air recordings for week 17-23 March 2012

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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Saturday 17th March 2012

Factual; History; Documentaries

How God Made The English
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 A Chosen People

The first in a three-part series in which Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History at Oxford University and presenter of the award-winning BBC series A History of Christianity, explores both what it means to be English and what has shaped English identity, from the Dark Ages, through the Reformation to modern times. Professor MacCulloch identifies three broad traits commonly associated with the English: the idea that the English think they're better than others; the idea that they are a specially tolerant people; and the idea that to be English, quintessentially is to be white, Anglo-Saxon and Church of England Christian. He investigates whether these stereotypes are accurate and looks at what forces have shaped English identity - secular or religious?


In this first episode, Professor MacCulloch chronicles the roots of the idea that the English think themselves better than others and duty-bound to play a leading role in world affairs. He argues that the roots of this attitude lie in a tangle of religious motives. He traces its origins to the notion of a 'chosen people' - a Biblical idea which the monk and historian, the Venerable Bede, took lock, stock and barrel from the Jewish scriptures and applied to the early English.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

Arena: The Dreams of William Golding
BBC2, 9:30-11:00pm

The Dreams of William Golding reveals the extraordinary life of one of the greatest English writers of the twentieth century.

With unprecedented access to the unpublished diaries in which Golding recorded his dreams, the film penetrates deep into his private obsessions and insecurities.
His daughter Judy and son David, both speak frankly about their father's demons, and the film follows Golding from the impoverished schoolmaster whose first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published when he was forty-three years old, to his winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983.
Other contributors include Golding's biographer John Carey, philosopher John Gray, writer Nigel Williams, the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, The Very Revd June Osborne, and best-selling author Stephen King.
Benedict Cumberbatch, who starred in the 2004 BBC adaptation of Golding's sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth, reads extracts from his books.


Drama; Films

Lord of the Flies
BBC2, 11:00pm-12:30am

Compelling film adaptation of William Golding's disturbing tale of a group of schoolboys stranded on a remote island following a plane crash. Their attempts to form a community end in disaster as they gradually revert to primitive savagery in the struggle to survive.


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Sunday 18th March 2012

Factual; Science and Nature

Orbit: Earth's Extraordinary Journey
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3

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 final episode we complete our journey, travelling back from the March equinox to the end of June. Kate Humble is in the Arctic at a place where spring arrives with a bang, whilst Helen Czerski chases a tornado to show how the earth's angle of tilt creates the most extreme weather on earth.



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Monday 19th March 2012

Factual; Crime and Justice

Crime and Punishment
BBC1, 9:15-10:00am, 6/10

A look at crime and punishment in modern Britain. Louise Minchin is at Birmingham City Centre Police HQ and Gethin Jones is behind the bars of Bristol Prison. In this diamond jubilee year, they chart the changes in crime, criminals, police and prisons over the last 60 years. They revisit dramatic landmark cases and present hard-hitting real life stories from the city streets and prison life today.


Factual

Britain's First Photo Album
BBC2, 6:30-7:00pm, 6/10, Newport to Gloucester

John Sergeant follows in the footsteps of Victorian pioneer photographer Francis Frith and his team who, in the 1860s embarked upon a monumental mission to document every city, town and village in Britain. John sets out to discover more about this extraordinary man and the unique record he left behind, travelling the country to find out what's changed, what's stayed the same and what has gone forever.  In this episode the journey continues in South Wales and John takes four more of his own pictures. John finds out about the restoration of the canals of Monmouthshire, heading deep underground to the caves beneath the Forest of Dean to try his hand at ochre mining and visiting Gloucester, where the photo of a cottage leads to the tale of how Britain's very first state schools came about.

 

Documentaries

China Triumph and Turmoil
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 2/3

Niall Ferguson asks how China manages to live under a Communist system of government but with a thriving capitalist economy.

The succession of revolutions orchestrated by Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. And yet this hard-line communist and murderer of businessmen is revered in China today as the founder of a modern-day capitalist superpower. Why?

To answer this question Niall travels from Beijing to Mao's birthplace at Shaoshan to the new supercity of Chongqing and to the rural backwaters of Anhui to track down survivors of the madness of Chairman Mao, newly minted billionaires and the Mao worshippers who believe tomorrow belongs to them.

He finds the way China is governed is eerily similar to the way it was under the First Emperor. All the power lies in the hands of nine men with expressionless faces and what looks like the same hair dye - as unelected and as powerful as Emperor Qin.

Autocracy that values unity over choice; secrecy over openness - not democracy. That has always been the Chinese way. It is the price that China is prepared to pay for the spectre that has always haunted its leaders: protest, rebellion and turmoil.


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Tuesday 20th March 2012

Factual; Crime and Justice


Crime and Punishment

BBC1, 9:15-10:00am, 7/10



Factual

Britain's First Photo Album
BBC2, 6:30-7:00pm, 7/10, Liverpool to Blackpool

John Sergeant follows in the footsteps of pioneer photographer Francis Frith and his team who, from the 1860s onwards, took thousands of photographs documenting the rapidly changing cityscapes and landscapes of Victorian Britain.


This time, John travels to the North West and to Liverpool, where he meets up with a photographic society that can trace its roots back to Frith himself. He visits Bolton and one of the world's first ever shopping malls, he drops in at Blackpool to find out more about the birth of this enduring seaside resort and to complete his travels John also takes a photograph to capture the modern setting of the Frith picture.



Factual; Science and Nature; Science and Technology

Horizon: The Truth About Fat
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm

Surgeon Gabriel Weston discovers the surprising truth about why so many people are piling on the pounds, and how to fight the fat epidemic.  She discovers the hidden battles of hormones that control people's appetites, and sees the latest surgery that fundamentally changes what a patient wants to eat by altering how their brains work.  Gabriel is shocked to find out that when it comes to being overweight, it's not always your fault you're fat.


Factual; Disability; Documentaries

Rita Simons: My Daughter, Deafness and Me
BBC1, 10:40-11:35pm

Documentary. EastEnders actress Rita Simons has five-year old twin daughters, Maiya and Jaimee. Maiya was diagnosed with hearing loss at six-months old. Rita and husband Theo have just had the shocking news that, one day, she will probably lose her hearing completely.


Rita and her family need to make life-changing decisions for Maiya's future - should they embrace the deaf world, learn to sign and send her to a specialist school or try and give her hearing with technology, implants and artificial sound or a mixture of the two?

Every parent agonises over the choices they make for their children but it is even more difficult when you have to decide on the fate of one of your child's senses, when they are too young to make a decision for themselves.



Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Discussion and Talk

Talk at the BBC
BBC4, 9:00-10.00pm, 1/3

Funny, surreal and extraordinary - extracts from interviews broadcast on the BBC from the 1950s to the 1970s, arguably the golden age of conversation.

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Wednesday 21st March 2012

Factual; Crime and Justice


Crime and Punishment
BBC1, 9:15-10:00am, 8/10

Factual

Britain's First Photo Album
BBC2, 6:30-7:00pm, 8/10, Stirling to Falkirk

John Sergeant continues his journey around Britain, tracing the footsteps of pioneer photographer Francis Frith and his team who, from the 1860s onwards, took thousands of photographs documenting the rapidly changing cityscapes and landscapes of 19th Century Britain.


Using the beautiful and unique old photographs as his guide, John visits the Western Highlands to find out more about a steam ship that has been transporting tourists for over 100 years and tries his hand at traditional Scottish baking. As well as taking his own photographs of these evocative settings John also heads off to Stirling Castle, which has recently undergone an incredible restoration.



Factaul; Documentaries

Wikileaks: The Secret Life of a Superpower
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2

Richard Bilton uncovers a struggle at the heart of US diplomacy between the ideals of freedom and spreading democracy, and the ruthless demands of American security and narrow self-interest. He examines what the Wikileaks cables reveal about America's conflicted dealings with Egypt's deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, and shows how US diplomats in Cairo missed warning signs that revolution in Egypt was coming. And he details the moral tension in US diplomacy brought about by America's controversial War on Terror. Using the cables, Richard uncovers the moral compromises made by America's diplomats over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, and he shows the secret US efforts to block investigations into alleged CIA rendition and abuse.

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Thursday 22nd March 2012

Factual; Crime and Justice


Crime and Punishment
BBC1, 9:15-10:00am, 9/10

Factual

Britain's First Photo Album
BBC2, 6:30-7:00pm, 9/10, Hartlepool to Whitby

The Victorian photographer Francis Frith spent the best part of his life documenting Britain. His aim was to photograph every city, every town and every village in the land. He and his team took tens of thousands of pictures and left us with an invaluable record of a Britain frozen in time. Now, John Sergeant is attempting to follow in Frith and his team's footsteps, finding out what has changed, what has stayed the same and what has gone forever, and he unravels some of the mysteries of this unique archive.


This time, John's journey continues along the North East Coast, where he searches for a missing rock formation in Hartlepool, visits the Victorian seaside resort of Saltburn-by-the Sea and meets a family in Whitby whose ancestors were captured on camera over 120 years ago. To complete his travels John also takes four photographs to capture the modern setting of the Frith pictures.



Nature and Wildlife

Natural World: Zambezi
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm

The seasonal story of Africa's River Zambezi, home to animals including elephants, water buffalo, zebras and hippos. In the wet season the rains burst the banks and all creatures - people included - are forced to move out of the way, leaving the fish to swim through the villages. In the dry season, the wildlife fight over the few pools of water while predators prowl.


Documentaries; Crime and Punishment

Death Row
Channel 4, 10:00-11:00pm, 1/3

Werner Herzog meets Hank Skinner, who was sentenced to death 18 years ago for the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend and her two mentally impaired sons; he has had his execution scheduled three times.  On one occasion, Skinner was only 20 minutes away from his death, having been read his last rites and eaten his final meal (fried chicken, boiled eggs, bacon cheeseburger, large fries and a big pitcher of chocolate milkshake).  Skinner has recently won a groundbreaking lawsuit at the Supreme Court of the United States, which in essence will allow him to sue the State of Texas to examine evidence that wasn't introduced during his trial.  He is a vivid storyteller, and his account of his last few hours before execution is chilling and profound.

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3

The delicious objects of Parisian Art Nouveau are explored by cultural correspondent Stephen Smith. Uncovering how the luscious decorative style first erupted into the cityscape, Stephen delves into the city's Bohemian past to learn how some of the 19th century's most glamorous and controversial figures inspired this extraordinary movement.


Revealing the story behind Alphonse Mucha's sensual posters of actress Sarah Bernhardt, looking at the exquisite jewellery designer Renee Lalique and visiting iconic art nouveau locations such the famous Maxim's restaurant, the programme builds a picture of fin-de-siecle Paris.

But Smith also reveals that the style is more than just veneer deep. Looking further into the work of glass maker Emile Galle and architect Hector Guimard, he sees how some of art nouveau's stars risked their reputation to give meaning and purpose to work they thought could affect social change.



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Friday 23rd March 2012

News

Britain's Crimes of Honour: Panorama
BBC1, 12:25-12:55am
Thousands of crimes in Britain are going unreported: beatings, imprisonment - even murder - committed by those closest to the victims, their families. These are crimes of so-called 'honour'. With access to police investigations, Panorama reveals the shocking details of 'honour' killings, of women driven to suicide and also hears from those on the run, in fear of their lives. The UK's lead prosecutor on 'honour' crimes says he will not tolerate multicultural sensitivities when it comes to this issue and a leading campaigner accuses her own community leaders of a failure of leadership in not speaking out against this abuse.



Factual; Crime and Justice

Crime and Punishment
BBC1, 9:15-10:00am, 10/10

Factual

Britain's First Photo Album
BBC2, 6:30-7:00pm, 10/10, Chesterfield to Eyam


Religion and Ethics

Reverse Missionaries
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3

Idealistic modern day missionaries travel to Britain to discover the historical roots of their faith and try to pursue their own missionary agenda in 21st century Britain
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