Off-air recordings for week 27th October - 2nd November 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 27th October

Crime; Documentaries

True Stories: America's Serial Killer
More 4, 9:00-10:00pm


In one of the worst serial killings in American history, over just two years police have discovered 11 bodies dumped on an isolated stretch of coastal road in Long Island, New York, leading to a wealthy gated community.

Four of the dead were sex workers who had advertised online, as part of a rapidly growing internet sex trade worth millions. The killer is still at large.

With access to several people close to the case and to the victims, this True Stories film pieces together a crime that exposes a darker side of middle-class, white America. The film includes compelling interviews with families of the victims and of another online escort, Shannan Gilbert, who was found nearby, and first-hand accounts from witnesses, senior police and officials close to the case.

Examining how the sex trade has increasingly moved online, the film sheds light on a world where clients can now search for individuals from the privacy of their home, and, most importantly for some, anonymously.

The most highly prized commodity in this online industry is the ordinary American girl, like many of the victims of the Long Island serial killer, who were cashing in on this seemingly straightforward, lucrative operation in order to make ends meet or earn fast money.

Shannan's fate was one of the biggest mysteries of this crime. Her disappearance triggered the man-hunt and unearthing of this gruesome, high-profile case. But when her body was finally discovered in December 2011, police concluded that Shannan's death was not linked to the serial killer, something that is still strongly contended by her family.

This film tells the chilling story of five American girls who fell prey to a new, highly dangerous form of prostitution.

As the hunt for the killer continues, the police cannot rule out the possibility that he has claimed more lives, or that he will kill again. Meanwhile, more women are taken in by the lure of the online sex trade, running the risk of becoming someone's next victim.



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Sunday 28th October

Documentaries

The American Road Trip Obama's Story
Channel 4, 7:00-8:00pm


After nearly four years in power what do ordinary Americans think of the man many of his supporters once called 'Black Jesus'? Ahead of the 2012 US election, Channel 4's Washington Correspondent, Matt Frei, takes a road trip through the heart of the Midwest.  Traveling through some of the swing states that will decide President Barack Obama's fate, Matt discovers what is really at stake in this election; in particular the fate of the increasingly endangered American middle class.

Obama entered the White House adored by millions, but has since faced an uphill struggle, wrestling with the worst recession for 60 years and Republican opponents who are determined to thwart the President at every turn.  Obama has been criticised for political naivety, for failing to create a clear narrative to explain his policy decisions, and for tactical blunders that have damaged his presidency.

Many Americans feel that this is a historic election: the last chance to turn around a country that many fear is in decline.  With the Republican candidate Mitt Romney breathing down his neck, Matt asks whether Obama - America's first black president - will also be a one-term president.


Factual; History; Documentaries

Michael Wood: The Story of India

BBC4, 8:00-9:00, 2/6

Michael Wood's epic series moves on to the revolutionary years after 500BC - the Age of the Buddha. Travelling by rail to the ancient cities of the Ganges plain, by army convoy through northern Iraq and on down the Khyber Pass, he shows how Alexander the Great's invasion of India inspired her first empire. Michael visits India's earliest capital, Patna, and using archaeology, legend and 'India's Rosetta stone', he shows how the ideas of the Buddha - 'India's first and greatest protester' - were turned into political reality by an Indian emperor who sowed the seeds of 'the most dangerous idea in history'.


Factual; History; Documentaries

Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 6/8 - Revolution


In the sixth episode of this landmark series charting the story of human civilisation, Andrew Marr explores the Age of Revolution.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, people across the world rose up in the name of freedom and equality against the power of the church and monarchy. In America, people fought a war to be free from British rule. In France, bloody revolution saw the king and aristocracy deposed. And in Haiti, the slaves revolted against their masters.

The world was also gripped by a scientific revolution, sweeping away old dogmas and superstition. Galileo revolutionized the way we saw humanity's place in the universe, while Edward Jenner used science to help save the lives of millions.


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Monday 29th October

Documentaries

Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life
More 4, 10:00-11:10pm, 3/3


Why does an atheist bother to get up in the morning?

That's the question Richard Dawkins seeks to answer as he continues his exploration of the big questions of life in a world shaking off religious faith.

In a journey that takes him from the casinos of Las Vegas to Buddhist monasteries in the foothills of the Himalayas, Richard Dawkins examines how both religious and non-religious people struggle to find meaning in their lives.

He looks at how our existence is ruled by chance, meeting people whose fate was to be born into extreme poverty in India's slums and the survivors of a natural disaster in Joplin, Missouri, a city ripped apart in 2011 by a tornado on a random course.

In the face of what appears to be a blindly indifferent universe, Dawkins argues that we each have to forge our own sense of meaning.

He meets the comedian Ricky Gervais, an atheist since the age of seven, for whom meaning comes through doing something creative.

For Dawkins, it is the awe and wonder in scientific enquiry - from the human genome to the quest for the Higgs Boson - that get him up in the morning.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media

How the Devil Got His Horns: A Diabolical Tale

BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm


Art historian and critic Alastair Sooke reveals how the Devil's image was created by artists of the Middle Ages. He explores how, in the centuries between the birth of Christ and the Renaissance, visual interpretations of the Devil evolved, with the embodiment of evil appearing in different guises - tempter, tyrant, and rebellious angel. Alastair shows how artists used their imaginations to give form to Satan, whose description is absent from the Bible.

Exploring some of the most remarkable art in Europe, he tells the stories behind that art and examines the religious texts and thinking which inspired and influenced the artists. The result is a rich and unique picture of how art and religion have combined to define images of good and evil


Documentaries

Dispatches: Getting Rich on the NHS

Channel 4, 8:00-8:30pm


Under the new health reforms, private firms are being awarded millions of pounds-worth of NHS contracts.

One of the major new players is Virgin Care, a global brand more readily associated with planes, trains and record stores. The company is already providing medical services and running entire medical centres and is developing links to GPs across England.

Health reforms were meant to improve choice and competition, and put GPs in the driving seat. Morland Sanders examines whether the rapid handover of services to private contractors is really good for the public purse, and good for patient care.



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Tuesday 30th October

Factual

Operation Iceberg
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2 - Birth of  a 'berg

In Part One the expedition will be setting up camp on the West coast of Greenland at the front of the colossal Store glacier. From here they’ll be trying to track the vast forces driving the creation of icebergs. Suspended from ropes above huge crevasses and sailing right up to the collapsing glacier-front, they hope to see how changes in the warm Arctic seas are weakening the front of the glacier.


Meanwhile, high on the Greenland ice sheet other members of the team will be diving underwater into the enigmatic blue lakes. They hope to capture on camera one of these Arctic oases draining into the glacier in a cataclysmic vortex. Then they’ll be climbing down into the glacier’s heart in an attempt to follow the water as it forces its way through hundreds of metres of solid ice and accelerates the glacier.

Above all, the team will be keeping the glacier front under surveillance by boat and helicopter. They’ll become ice chasers, trying to predict and film the very moment when a new mega-berg splits from the glacier front and collapses spectacularly into the ocean, creating a mini-tsunami.



factual; Life Stories; Documentaries

Britain's Hidden Hungry
BBC1, 10:35-11:30pm


Care-leaver Charlotte eats just one meal a day. It's all she can afford, so she starves herself till evening. Sandra, middle class mother of five, is embarrassed that all she can give her son for his school packed lunch is bread and butter. Middle manager Kelly, mother of two, hasn't eaten for two days. Meet Britain's hidden hungry - and they're not what you'd expect.

As of 2012, more than 170,000 people are believed to be dependent on a chain of 300 foodbanks run by a Christian charity, the Trussell Trust. Bafta award winning film-maker David Modell has spent six months at the Coventry foodbank following the stories of Charlotte, Sandra and Kelly to find out how, in 2012, so many Britons are suffering genuine and prolonged bouts of real hunger.



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Wednesday 31st October

Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documenataries

The Culture Show
BBC2, 19:00-19:30pm


Andrew Graham-Dixon is at the National Gallery's first major exhibition of photography to explore the influence of painting and fine art traditions on the work of some our leading photographers. Investigative journalist John Sweeney has made two acclaimed documentaries about The Church of Scientology. So, we asked him to join Mark Kermode to review The Master, the latest movie by Paul Thomas Anderson, which chronicles the life of the charismatic leader of a religious cult.

In the first of two reports about this year's shortlist for The Samuel Johnson Prize, Miranda Sawyer reviews three of the books in the running for the UK's leading prize for non-fiction. To celebrate Halloween, we mark the 400th anniversary of the trial and execution of twelve women accused of witchcraft with actress Maxine Peake and her band Eccentronic Research Council, who take their inspiration from the Pendle Witch Trials.


Arts, Culture and the Media

Frankenstein: A Modern Myth

Channel 4, 11:10pm-12:10am


From Boris Karloff to Mel Brooks, Frankenstein has fired the imagination of generations of artists who have created their own interpretation of this Gothic masterpiece.

Written by a 19-year-old girl nearly 200 years ago, this was the first and greatest myth of the modern scientific age.

Mary Shelley began writing her novel in Geneva, where she went to escape the judgmental gaze of British society with her lover Percy Shelley (a married man), her half-sister Clare and Clare's lover, the notorious poet Lord Byron.

Living a life of subversive glamour, they were the rock stars of the 1800s.

Shut up indoors during the wettest summer on record, Lord Byron suggested they each try to write a ghost story. Unable to begin, Mary panicked at first, but then in a waking dream she had the vision for her novel.

Frankenstein - published anonymously in 1818 when she was just 21 - has gone on to inspire its own popular genre of horror movies, punk rock and theatre productions.

Frankenstein: A Modern Myth looks at some of these depictions, including Danny Boyle's sell-out hit at the National Theatre.

The film has exclusive access to rehearsals and interviews with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller - who alternate the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature - and with Danny Boyle.

In a world preoccupied with debates about man overreaching himself, the perils of 'playing God' that animate Shelley's shocking ethical parable continue to keep the myth of Frankenstein alive today.



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Thursday 1st November

Factual

Operation Iceberg
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/2 - Life and Death of a 'berg


In the second part of this Arctic adventure series, Chris Packham and Helen Czerski and a team of explorers and scientists investigate an iceberg floating out at sea. Their aim is to discover the forces that gradually destroy an iceberg by looking at a massive tabular 'berg 50 kilometres from the Canadian coast.

During the expedition the team confronts a large number of polar bears - the largest land predator on Earth. And while working on the iceberg a large chunk of it actually breaks off beneath their feet. Despite these dangers, the team succeeds in revealing the mysteries of these stunning natural phenomena



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Friday 2nd November

News

Panorama: The Hospital that Stopped Caring
BBC1, 12:25-12:55am (signed version)

Last year BBC Panorama exposed the violent abuse of people with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View hospital outside Bristol. Now, using undercover footage never seen before, the programme reveals new evidence of poor training and false record-keeping. A number of former patients have faced further assaults or unnecessary restraints in other care establishments. Following the closure of Winterbourne View, and as 11 of its former staff are sentenced in court, Panorama asks: are the most vulnerable people in society any better protected?


Documentaries

The Year the Town Hall Shrank
BBC4, 2:35-3:35am, 1/3 - Winners and Losers

Documentary following the effects of the austerity-driven budget cuts on Stoke-on-Trent and the wider repercussions for the city's residents. In the first episode shot during December 2010, a £36million shortfall to the local authority's finances is discovered, and council leader Mohammed Pervez is left with the unpalatable task of deciding what services are to be scrapped.


News; Current Affairs

Unreported World
Channel 4, 7:30-8:00pm, 1/8 - USA: A Talk Radio Nation


In the run-up to the 2012 US election, Krishnan Guru-Murthy meets the talk-radio hosts broadcasting to a country more polarised than ever before.  A news anchor steeped in the ethics of impartial reporting, and a former talk-radio show host himself, Krishnan finds his own values openly challenged and dismissed by these radio hosts, who say his neutrality is a form of bias and censorship.  It's a world where - almost - anything goes; broadcasters are free to say 'all Muslims should be bombed' on the air, though swearing isn't allowed.

Radio hosts don't care who they offend, and they cheerfully admit to political bias: they see it as their job to get Obama voted out.  The team meets Joyce Kaufman, the revolver-carrying Florida radio host fighting to get the core Republican vote out in this swing state.  She was at the Mitt Romney fundraiser where he accused 47 per cent of US adults of not paying federal tax, and she thinks people should be ashamed to live on welfare.  Part Puerto Rican, part Jewish, she describes herself as single to appeal to her listeners. 'The men think I'm available, and the women think I'm independent,' she tells Krishnan.  But when the team visits her home, they learn she's been in a happy relationship for years, and she says a lot of her anger on air is part of her performance.  Is she guilty of misleading her listeners during her shows by cherry-picking her facts? She says it's staying 'neutral' about issues like welfare dependency that's wrong.

In Mississippi, the team meets nationally-syndicated radio host Bryan Fischer, who believes Islam is a religion of hate and Muslims should convert to Christianity.  Krishnan meets him again in Washington, just one of a number of prominent right-wing radio hosts topping the bill at a huge 'values voters' summit along with Paul Ryan, and wielding huge influence within the Republican Party.  Talk-radio may be preaching to the converted, but in re-affirming the listeners' prejudices, Krishnan finds only highly partisan versions of the 'truth' survive.



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