Off-air recordings for week 6-12 October 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 6th October

Arts, Culture and the Media

Arena: The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour Revisited
BBC2, 9:45-10:45pm

Arena presents the greatest Beatles story never told, a blockbuster double bill: a documentary full of fabulous Beatles archive material never shown before anywhere in the world. And the first screening for over 30 years of a lost and forgotten treasure, the only film conceived and directed by The Beatles themselves - Magical Mystery Tour.
Part One - Magical Mystery Tour Revisited
Songs you’ll never forget, the film you’ve never seen, and a story that’s never been heard. In 1967, in the wake of the extraordinary impact of Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles made a film – a dreamlike story of a coach daytrip, a magical mystery tour. It was seen by a third of the nation, at 8.35pm on BBC One on Boxing Day - an expectant public, hoping for some light entertainment for a family audience.
Magical Mystery Tour was greeted with outrage and derision by middle England and the establishment media. “How dare they?”, they cried – “They’re not film directors, who do they think they are?” they howled. Where were the four lovable moptops of Help! and A Hard Day’s Night?
What propelled The Beatles to make this surreal, startling and – at the time – utterly misunderstood film? Contributors include Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam, Paul Merton and Neil Innes.


Arts, Culture and the Media

The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour
BBC2, 10:45-11:40pm

Part Two – The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour
Fully restored to the highest technical standard with a remixed soundtrack, Magical Mystery Tour comes out of the shadows and onto the screen.
By the end of 1967, The Beatles had achieved a creativity unprecedented in popular music.
Their triumphant summer release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was both avant garde and an instant hit. It went straight to No.1 in June and remained there for the rest of the year. They immersed themselves in the fiercely radical art of the new counterculture, and decided to make a film on their own terms, not as pop stars but as artists. However, was their adoring public ready for the move?
Roll up, roll up for the Mystery Tour! Made in England by The Beatles


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Sunday 7th October

Factual; History; Documentaries

Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/8- The Word and the Sword

In the third episode of this landmark series charting the story of human civilisation, Andrew Marr plunges into the spiritual revolutions that shook the world between 300 BC and 700 AD.
This was an age that saw the bloody prince Ashoka turn to Buddhism in India; the ill-fated union of Julius Caesar and Egypt's Cleopatra; the unstoppable rise of Christianity across the Roman Empire and the dramatic spread of Islam from Spain to Central Asia.
Each dramatic story pits the might of kings and rulers against the power of faith. But Andrew Marr discovers that the most potent human force on the planet came from the combination of faith and military power. Both Christianity and Islam created new empires of 'the word and the sword'.

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Monday 8th October

Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

The Digital Human
BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm, 2/8

Alex Krotoski explores what the digital world tells us about ourselves. This week: Influence. How has the digital world changed the way opinions are voiced and shaped?


News

Panorama: Return of the Supergrass
BBC1, 8:30-9:00pm


The recent shootings of two Manchester policewomen have highlighted Britain's problem with violent crime. Now a previously-discredited weapon is being used to try to fight the most serious and organised crime - the supergrass, criminals prepared to turn on their own and give evidence in court.

Panorama investigates the remarkable deals that these often violent gangsters are being offered to become the next generation of supergrasses. The agreements have led to gunmen getting off life sentences. A teenage gang member has also escaped prosecution, despite helping to cover up a fatal shooting. And Panorama reveals cases where the credibility of the supergrass is already in question.


Factual; Documentaries

Creationism: Conspiracy Road Trip
BBC3, 9:00-10:00pm


Comedian Andrew Maxwell takes five British creationists to the west coast of America to try to convince them that evolution is true and their ideas are, well, crackers. Stuck on a bus across 2,000 miles of dustbowl roads with these religious fundamentalists, Maxwell tackles some mind-boggling ideas. Could the Earth be only 6,000 years old, and did humans and T-Rex live side by side?

It's a bumpy ride as he's confronted with some very un-Christian behaviour along the way, but by the end could he possibly win over any of the Bible-bashers with hard scientific fact... and keep a straight face?


Crime; Documentaries

The Great Train Robbery
ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm


"If it was going to be your brother on the train or your husband, or a friend of yours, and they were brutally attacked like that and terrified. Would you think these guys were cool, that they were heroes? I don’t think you would." - Nick Russell-Pavier, author

It was the crime of the century – and nearly 50 years on, this brand new 60-minute documentary for ITV1 examines the Great Train Robbery.  This documentary looks at the heist from the moment it was carried out at a desolate railway bridge, the way it captured the public imagination and elevated Ronnie Biggs and his partners in crime from small-time crooks to folklore figures. Yet is the real truth dark and disturbing? Some glaring questions remain unanswered. Was it really a victimless crime? What is the significance of the men who got away? And with only £400,000 of the £2.6 million they stole recovered, what happened to the rest of the money? The documentary features brand new interviews with key figures including Ronnie Biggs's wife Charmian, relatives of the robbers, and the policeman who discovered the gang's hideout at Leatherslade Farm, alongside rare ITV archive interviews with the robbers, as well as iconic archive film of the crime’s aftermath. The Great Train Robbery also challenges romantic folklore surrounding the robbers and provides an insight into a landmark moment in time as Britain stood on the cusp of major social and political upheaval and the robbers' generation - too young to have served in the war - were the first to be seduced by the promise of a better lifestyle as consumerism began to take hold of society.

Charmian Biggs, talking about her husband Ronnie, said it hadn't been his intention to continue his previous criminal ways. "I had extracted a promise from him when he married me that he wouldn’t go into anything criminal and I believed him. And I think he meant it at the time." Historian Dominic Sandbrook explains the context in which the robbery took place at the start of the 1960s. “People have this kind of Robin Hood fantasy if you like, of the Great Train robbers as actually some sort of Ealing comedy enterprise. Which of course it isn’t. These people are career criminals, who are out to get what they can for themselves.”

Train robber Bruce Reynolds explains the way he felt at the time: "The way I looked at it I was an outlaw, that society didn’t care for me and I didn’t particularly care for society."

The documentary looks at how some media reports of the gang's robbery of a Royal Mail money train in Buckinghamshire, led to a popular perception of them as folk heroes, despite the seriousness of the crime. By the time the world woke up to the news of the caper, the robbers had scarpered to Leatherslade Farm to lay low. Yet they abandoned the farm without covering their tracks. Local police officer John Woolley tells the documentary how he uncovered evidence of the robbery under a trapdoor. “Even in the half light I could see that that cellar was absolutely choc-a-block with bulging sacks. And as the top flopped open I could see parcel wrappers, bank note wrappers, consignment notes, all bearing the names of the famous high-street banks.”

In London, times had changed for the robbers' families. Marilyn Wisbey, daughter of Tommy, says: “I mean, one minute we would buy clothes from a catalogue and the next minute we’d be in a black taxi down to Knightsbridge and Harrods.” But Charmian Biggs recounts the police raids and arrests that swiftly ensued.
She says: “A whole group of policemen, eight perhaps, arrived at the house. I answered the door. They barged in, in September after the robbery, about two o’clock in the afternoon. They asked for him, he was at work, I offered to ring him but was told I couldn’t use the phone. I was made to sit down and say nothing till Ron came home.”

At trial, all but one pleaded not guilty, and suggested that the evidence at Leatherslade Farm was planted. The identity of three men who took part in the raid but never stood trial has never been revealed by police or the robbers, says Nick Russell-Pavier, an author and expert on the Great Train Robbery.
“The guys who were prosecuted successfully claimed they were fitted up. So if they were fitted up why couldn’t the police fit up the three guys who got away. The answer is they weren’t fitted up.” The robbers were given a total of 307 years in prison - up to 30 years each. Later, after Charlie Wilson escaped from Winson Green prison in Birmingham, Ronnie Biggs went over the wall at HMP Wandsworth and famously went on the run. But years later, most of the families had little to show for the robbery, says Nick Reynolds, son of train robber Bruce, who also went on the run before his arrest. “The money went on just being on the run, its an expensive game laundering, false passports, keeping one step ahead of the law.”

Former ITN reporter Gerald Seymour explains the impact the crime had on the robbers, and their families.
“What a waste of some clever bright guys who at the fork in the road went left when maybe there was a right, and they paid so dearly for it. I can’t say that any of them would say it was worth it.”


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Shock of the New
BBC4, 11:00pm-12:00am, 7/8 - Culture As Nature

Robert Hughes goes Pop when he examines the art that referred to the man-made world that fed off culture itself via works by Rauchenberg, Warhol and Lichtenstein.

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Tuesday 9th October

Factual; History; Documentaries

The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 4/6 - Furnace of Change

Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing the country in ways it has never been seen before. It is 1485: a young nobleman sails to the land of his fathers from exile in France. His mission - to capture the English crown. For the first time, a self-proclaimed Welshman will be king of England. Under the dynasty he founds, Wales becomes united with England. For every generation of Welsh people to come, the consequences are huge. But exactly what it means - for the next 250 years, at least - depends on whether you are a landowner or one of the ordinary people.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Life Stories

Edna O'Brien: Life Stories
BBC4, 10:45-11:40pm


Now 81 and due to publish her memoirs in October 2012, renowned Irish novelist Edna O'Brien has opened her home and her heart to documentary filmmakers.

O'Brien's journey from Tuamgraney, County Clare to the centre of literary life in London has involved rebellion, censorship, elopement, motherhood, divorce, custody battles and the rearing of two sons as a single mother, as well as a glittering social life and a growing profile as a public personality and commentator.

Based on a series of frank, moving and entertaining interviews with O'Brien and her two sons Carlo and Sasha Gebler, the film offers a privileged glimpse of O'Brien's more private life, her writing process and rituals - a fascinating portrait of a woman whose infinite variety and ageless spirit make her an icon at home and abroad.

Edna O'Brien's was, and still is, a life lived in technicolour. She was a key figure in the social and literary whirl of sixties and seventies London and is probably the only Irish novelist who credits the taking of LSD with influencing her prose style in the early seventies.

The documentary touches on tales of the writer's social encounters with many of that period's biggest names, including Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum. But all the while, in her life and in her work O'Brien was dealing with a complex emotional life, including her tangled relationship with her parents and her ambivalence towards Ireland. The resulting film gives unprecedented insight, encompassing the sweep of a long career, into one of the great survivors in Irish literature.



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Wednesday 10th October

Factual; History; Documentaries

The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 5/6 - A New Beginning

Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. It's boom time as Wales becomes known, the world over, for one particular product - Welsh steam coal, the best you can get. In the space of 50 years, 'black gold' builds a new Wales. The coalfield pulls in hundreds of thousands of migrants with a different language and culture, becoming a bustling modern world of its own. Yet no sooner has Wales found itself at the centre of global trade, than the Depression causes an industrial crash with a bitter social fallout.


Factual; Documentaries

Welcome to India
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 2/3


This observational series continues to explore what life is really like in some of the densest neighbourhoods on the planet: the backstreets of India's megacities. A popular tactic for people here, so adept at operating in a crowded world, is turning the stuff others would call 'waste' into an opportunity.

Johora started out as a rag-picker, but through building a bottle recycling business on a railway embankment, she has big ambitions for her family of seven kids. When the local gangsters increase their protection payment demands, she boldly takes out a big loan and attempts to push her illegal business to another level.

And it's not just small waste. Kanye uses a handheld blowtorch to cut up ships discarded by the rest of the world, helping satisfy India's thirst for steel. A doting father, his dangerous but relatively well paid job educates his three daughters and provides his ticket to a brighter future. But his hopes are in jeopardy when he is laid off.

Ashik buys up beef fat from the abattoir, and proudly renders it down to make tallow. It looks disgusting, even before he is plagued by a maggot infestation. But this thrifty use of 'waste' may well be destined for your soap or cosmetics.


Crime; Documentaries

Born to Kill?  The Hollywoood Hillside Strangler

Channel 5, 11:55pm-12:40am


Hollywood has always had a dark side, but Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono were perhaps its darkest.
Serial killers usually work alone but Bianchi and Buono would defy all the rules. In the late seventies, these 'killing cousins' would commit a series of brazen murders that left the women of Los Angeles terrified to walk the streets.
Their murders plumbed the depths of depravity and their cold heartedness and forensic awareness left detectives angry and frustrated.
On his capture, Kenneth Bianchi would make an audacious attempt to convince the world he had multiple personalities and was not responsible for the murders.
Bianchi and Buonowould kidnap, rape, torture and snuff out the lives of 12 innocent young girls, but what had led to this extraordinary collaboration in killing? Were they both born to kill?



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Thursday 11th October

Factual; History; Documentaries

The Story of Wales
BBC2, 7:00-8:00pm, 6/6 - England & Wales

Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing our country in ways it's never been seen before. In the last seventy years, Wales changes more rapidly than ever. In this final episode, a Welshman battles to set up Britain's most cherished institution, the British parliament votes to drown a Welsh valley, a new generation of sporting heroes sets the flags waving and television itself becomes part of the story of Wales. We're a nation of commuters and consumers, but our sense of history has revived: we are a people with a story - and that story gives us power.


Factual; Talks and Presentations; Documentaries

RTS Huw Wheldon Lecture 2012
BBC2, 11:20pm-12:00am

BBC foreign correspondent Lyse Doucet delivers this year's Huw Wheldon Memorial Lecture, talking about how social media is transforming broadcast journalism. She examines the effect that social networking sites and tools had on the reporting of major stories from 2011, including the Arab Spring and the London riots, and considers the lessons news organisations must learn as they seek to harness the power of this evolving resource.


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Friday

Factual; History; Documentaries

Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs
BBC2, 9:00-10:00pm, 3/3 - No Going Back


As we reach the final part of Dr Pamela Cox’s informative series, we find that Britain’s domestic servants are kicking against the established order. The First World War changed the social landscape for ever, landowners freed their servants to fight while women who would otherwise have been part of the “servant class” played their part. They took over the jobs of absent men, including difficult and dangerous munitions work, and weren’t prepared simply to slide back into their former servile roles once the war was over.

Cox looks at the measures used by Britain’s ladies to find maids, including trying to lure them with a promise to ditch that hated symbol of deference, the servant’s cap.

Pamela Cox explores how the idea of a `servant class' came to an end in the 20th century. She reveals why filling male roles in stately homes and factories during the First World War left many female servants reluctant to return to their old lives, and how the rise of semi-detached suburban homes during the 1930s led to major changes in domestic workers' duties. Finally, she charts how women's employment changed in the years following the Second World War, and examines the roles of domestic employees in 21st-century Britain.




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