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 29th September
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 8:00-9:00pm, 1/3 - Knowing Your Place
Dr Pamela Cox looks at the grand houses of the Victorian ruling elite - large country estates dependent on an army of staff toiling away below stairs.
The Victorians ushered in a new ideal of servitude - where loyal, selfless servants were depersonalised stereotypes with standardised uniforms, hairstyles and even generic names denoting position. In the immaculately preserved rooms of Erddig in North Wales, portraits of servants like loyal housekeeper Mrs Webster hint at an affectionate relationship between family and servants, but the reality for most was quite different.
In other stately homes, hidden passages kept servants separate from the family. Anonymity, invisibility and segregation were a crucial part of their gruelling job - and the strict servant hierarchy even kept them segregated from each other.
Factual; Life Stories; Documentaries
The Clintons
BBC2, 10:15-11:15pm
The series explores the sordid scandal and grand achievement of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas. Forming the ultimate power couple alongside his wife Hillary, William Jefferson Clinton becomes one of the most successful politicians in modern American history. Complex, conflicted and rife with scandal, Bill Clinton's presidency would define a crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks.
With unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and Kenneth Starr.
Winning the 1996 election in a landslide, Clinton pulls off one of the greatest turnarounds in political history and alongside him, Hillary succeeds in passing crucial legislation. Times are good, the economy is booming, and American prestige and power internationally are at an all-time high. The president's dream of repairing the breach with Republicans seems within reach and the Clintons seem stronger than ever. But then Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky - a White House intern - becomes public after she confides in a co-worker named Linda Tripp. The ensuing scandal gives Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr the ammunition he needs to recharge his stalled investigation of the Whitewater affair and Hillary her highest approval rating yet.
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Sunday 30th September
Factual; History; Documentaries
Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/8 - Age of Empire
In this episode, Andrew Marr tells the story of the first empires which laid the foundations for the modern world.
From the Assyrians to Alexander the Great, conquerors rampaged across the Middle East and vicious wars were fought all the way from China to the Mediterranean. But this time of chaos and destruction also brought enormous progress and inspired human development. In the Middle East, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and one of the most powerful ideas in world history emerged: the belief in just one God. In India, the Buddha offered a radical alternative to empire building - a way of living that had no place for violence or hierarchy and was open to everyone.
Great thinkers from Socrates to Confucius proposed new ideas about how to rule more wisely and live in a better society. And in Greece, democracy was born - the greatest political experiment of all. But within just a few years, its future would be under threat from invasion by an empire in the east...
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Monday 1st October
Factual; History; Travel; Documentaries
A303: Highway to the Sun
BBC4, 10:00-11:00pm
The A303 is the road that passes Stonehenge on the way to the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. On the way, it whisks drivers through 5,000 years of remarkable moments in English history. And it is the star of this film made for armchair travellers and history lovers.
Writer Tom Fort drives its 92-mile length in a lovingly-restored Morris Traveller. Along the way he has many adventures - he digs up the 1960s master plan for the A303's dreams of superhighway status; meets up with a Neolithic traveller who knew the road like the back of his hand; gets to know a section of the Roman 303; uncovers a medieval murder mystery; and discovers what lies at the end of the Highway to the Sun.
Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries
The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am
Robert Hughes grapples with the artists who made visual art from the crags and vistas of their internal world - the Expressionists, including Van Gogh, De Kooning, Pollock and beyond.
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Tuesday 2nd October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 1/6 - The Making of Wales
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. Thirty thousand years in the making, this story begins with the drama of the earliest-known human burial in Western Europe. Huw delves into the biggest prehistoric copper mine in the world, and visits the mesmerising site of an Iron Age hillfort. He reveals the true scale of the Roman occupation and shows how Welsh saints carried the light of the gospel to the rest of the Celtic world, and left a mark on their homeland that we can all still read today.
Crime; Documentaries
The Manson Family: Born To Kill?
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm
Charles Manson and his so-called 'family' would become the most infamous killers of the 20th century. Over two bloody nights in August 1969, seven people including actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of movie director Roman Polanski, were savagely murdered in their homes.
Their orgy of brutal and seemingly senseless slaughter shocked the world andmarked the end of the 1960s hippie dream. But what made Charles Manson the man he was? Why did so many young people fall under his spell and how was he able to convince them so easily to slaughter innocent people without conscience?
Contributors include detectives, attorneys and psychiatrists who tried to unravel the mystery, plus former members of the cult. Were Manson and his 'family' born to kill?
Factual; Histpry; Documentaries
Ian Hislop's Stiff Upper Lip - An Emotional History of Britain
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Ian Hislop asks when and why we British have bottled up or let out our feelings and how this has affected our history.
Revealing as much about ourselves today as about our past, this is a narrative history of emotion and identity over the last three hundred years, packed with extraordinary characters, fascinating vignettes and much humour, illuminated through the lens of culture - novels, paintings, magazines, cartoons, film and television - from which Ian gives his personal take on our evolving national character.
Far from being part of our cultural DNA, emotional restraint was a relatively recent national trait. Foreigners in Tudor England couldn't believe how touchy-feely we could be - 'wherever you move there is nothing but kisses' wrote a shocked Erasmus. In this opening episode, Ian Hislop charts how and why the stiff upper lip emerged in the late 18th and early 19th century in a country till then often awash with sentiment.
In 18th century British society, public emoting was a sign of refinement and there was a vogue for all things sentimental. It was very much the done thing for women and men to weep at Samuel Richardson's novels or have Johann Zoffany paint their portraits to highlight their tenderness and sensitivity. But Ian reveals that a new idea - politeness - paved the way for the emergence of the stiff upper lip by prizing consistency of behaviour over emotional honesty. To illustrate this he plunders the candid diary of James Boswell, an aspirational young Scot plagued with anxieties about how far he should show his feelings in fashionable London...
Factual; Families and Relationships; Health and Wellbeing
Is Breast best?: Cherry Healey Investigates
BBC1, 10:35-11:35pm
In this fun yet compelling documentary, Cherry Healey explores the topical issue of breastfeeding and asks Is Breast Best? The World Health Organisation advises that all mothers breastfeed their children for at least the first six months after birth, but Cherry herself found the experience painful and traumatic and eventually gave up.
Over a year later she is still plagued by feelings of guilt for not trying harder and is now on a mission to find out how other mums feel - is she the only one? Along the way she meets Jess, a teen mum who never even considered breastfeeding and has formula-fed all the way with no worries at all, and a group of 'lactivists' who strongly believe that breastfeeding is the only option for a new mum.
Join Cherry as she explores the world of boobs, bottles, babies and breast milk with her usual refreshing honesty.
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Wednesday 3rd October
Factual; History; Documentaries
The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 2/6 - Power Struggles
Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. This
Story of Wales spans seven centuries from the building of a great frontier to Owain Glyndwr's epic struggle for independence.
We meet the medieval kings who shape Wales and watch a nation emerge out of their lust for power and land. Amidst battles
with Vikings, Saxons and Normans, Welsh culture flourishes. But the death of our last native Prince is followed by a century of
plague and famine. Then, the charismatic Glyndwr leads a rebellion against the English Crown.
Factual; Documentaries
Welcome to India
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/3
Learning how to survive on an increasingly crowded planet is probably our ultimate challenge. But there is one place, home to over a sixth of the world's population, which is already making a good shot at adapting: welcome to India. This extraordinary observational series casts aside the usual preconceptions about the sub-continent, and lets a few of India's 1.2 billion show how their world really works.
With astonishing access into the densest districts of Kolkata and Mumbai, it celebrates the impressive resourcefulness, resilience and absolute pragmatism of those living and working there, and reveals the psyche needed to get ahead in the biggest of crowds.
This follows two main characters as they employ all their ingenuity to carve out a home. With more people moving to cities in India than anywhere else on earth, securing that place you can call home is vital for nurturing your family's future.
Kaale has come to Kolkata in search of gold - incredibly, he earns a living by sweeping the streets of the jewellery district for stray gold dust. But to fulfil his business ambitions, he must escape his landlord and rent a room of his own. His plan pushes even his resourcefulness to the limit: dredging for gold in Kolkata's drains.
Rajesh and his wife Sevita have created their home on a Mumbai beach after their controversial love marriage. They support their kids' future with some impressive improvisation, including running their house as a makeshift beach pub selling cane liquor. But then eviction by the Mumbai council threatens their home for good.
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Thursday 4th October
Factual; Documentaries
Health Before the NHS
BBC4, 11:35pm-12:35am, 2/2 - A Medical Revolution
Timeshift: The Robert Winston-narrated mini-series concludes with the story of hospitals. At the beginning of the 20th century these were forbidding places very much to be avoided - a last resort for the destitute rather than places you would go to get better. Using unique archive footage from an era when infectious disease was virtually untreatable and powerful first-hand accounts from patients, doctors and nurses, the programme explores the extraordinary transformation of the hospital from Victorian workhouse to modern centre of medicine.
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Friday 5th October
Factual; History; Documentaries
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3 - Class War
Dr Pamela Cox explores what happened when servants directly challenged their masters and mistresses, causing havoc in the golden age of Edwardian society.
It is the story of wayward laundry maids, butlers selling their stories to the press and even suffragette maids. Above all, it is the story of how the Victorian 'ideal' of service came to be questioned - not by employers, but by the servants themselves.
The middle classes had an insatiable need for servants in their heavily furnished townhouses, but at the same time the number of people in the so-called 'servant class' dropped, as young workers were lured into shops and factories. To plug the gap, a new source of servants was found - shockingly, among the urban poor - mopping up orphans, waifs and strays from slums, workhouses and reforms schools and training them for careers in domestic service. As the clouds of war gathered, the whole notion of service was in crisis.
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